

i * » * . » *.•>••• ' f ’ 

, M *t V V M /« W*M 1 




•WHfU 


. > > 

il y «< .fV ' 
f I #1 »f f *• *L . , 

• I* > M ' V 

>1 V l( *' ■ ' ' ? > 



. V ;♦ • • 

. *» •! > 


>1 VI *• *' * 


. »i *» «* * 1 *' 

, . • >*♦! 1 
« * >1 » » 

, , , J*; ♦ >> • 


., 17 * * o* *'■ - ^ .*■•*• 

«, '* * ' "'a * C»* **■ -’ . 

*, V> *> \f' Jurat: ?H;rK Jt* h 5 CJ 

. UV >4-* '* •-'•* > %«n *J£ 1 - r 1 !k ’. 


.••/’♦r.rvN'vri 

i V v?i. kt > •» 

m*» *T* ' * uIiWVw Vr *i %• 
l. V, litifL* 



■ *. w f • i » • . 

1 4 V V'r"* 4 ^ i&l 


>,r^l 1! < >5un?5^ j ifll 


f, jfV * '•< >i ^ • 
. » » ) !.*'•#» If I • 


T he Lost Legion 





iifi&ri 

47 vfi)*%* ' 


$»$P « & 

j - - v ■ /*%* •<»■■: ‘ ", l \ ' 1 ' . C, 

» • viftJlMr}TOTf"i^rT^‘ , V tL v ,f v : V%, \ • • ^ 



’* m » *•?%!* V * V n - . 

\ 7 vV r' N ,*’ V‘ t V s k • u 

>* W V 1 £ * * VjNr ? 

tV'v; U 3 '--\i 4 »£- 














Class P 

Book - M L~ 
Copyright N?. 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSITS 






















































































1*^1 






















■ ' •’ ■ 










- . 





















































































. 1 "' ^ 

































































































■ 





THE 

LOST LEGION 


BY 

ROBERT VALENTINE MATHEWS 

u 

AUTHOR OF 

CHILD OF THE STARS AND 
SONG OF THE PINES 



1 > 
0 > > 


1909 

PUBLISHED BY 

EDWIN C. HILL 

NEW YORK 




Copyright, 1909 
By EDWIN C. HILL 
New York 


TO 

MY WIFE 


THE LETTERS OF MARGARET GAIR 


Edited by Herself 



FOREWORD 


1. In the days when the world was yet young , a 
man who was heavy of heart went out into the wilder- 
ness to pray: and he cried aloud unto the Lord in the 
agony of his soul . 

2. And , lo, there appeared before him an angel 
of God, saying: Thus saith the Lord thy God unto 
thee who art heavily laden: 

3. My love have I sent into the world for all time 
that they that dwell therein may know the glory of it; 
that they may treasure this love for me and for each 
other, and be true to it, and so find life everlasting . 

4. Man and woman they shall love, and together 
they shall love me, who is their Father in Heaven . 

5. But if either of them shall forget the love I have 
let them know and accept in its stead any lesser thing: 

6. Such an one shall join the Legion of Lost Souls, 
who, though they live, yet are dead . 

7. And these, because they have been false to the 
truth I have put into their hearts, I have made to wan- 
der through endless years, forever desolate and alone, 
seeking to die. 

8. Then the man raised his eyes and saw the angel 
of the Lord still there before him, and he lifted up his 
voice in lamentation. 

9. And again the angel of the Lord spake unto the 

vii 


FOREWORD 


viii 

man: Believe that the love thou findest in thy heart is 
eternal. If thou hast faith in it, then thou hast faith 
• in God, for love is God and God is love; and to him 
that believeth, God will give joy everlasting. 

10. Go thou now on thy way in peace, because thy 
Father in Heaven has let thee know human love, that, 

' through it, thou ^f a y s h in the time to come, know the 
Love that is Divine. 

11. And straightway the man turned his steps out 
of the wilderness and took his place again among men. 

12. And in the end, the prophecy of the angel of the 
Lord was fulfilled. 


EDITOR’S NOTE 


A long while ago, a child began building her Cas- 
tles in Spain and filling them with childish idols, — 
queer, old-fashioned fancies of a little mind. Let us 
laugh now, lest the tears blind us at the thought of 
the impossible dream-world with its innocence. 

A dancing figure, shining eyes and golden hair, a 
quaint frock and quaint graces — a little maiden with a 
winning heart. 

Alone with her thoughts that took more and more 
definite shape as time went on, she built up an imag- 
inary world over which she presided with a delight 
limited only by the boundless scope of her own wild 
fancies. In those days it was a doll’s house by the 
sea, probably because the little girl had never seen 
the salt sea. In the years to come, it was to be a tiny 
house by the sea, too, where the golden dreams of 
girlhood were to be spun through long afternoons, 
while the sea wind lay wet against the panes. 

Margaret Gair. 

Paradise, Montana, 

March , 190 — . 



THE LETTERS OF MARGARET GAIR 


I 

These are little letters coming from my heart to the 
other heart that somewhere in this wide world is seek- 
ing my own, just as I am seeking it. Shall I tell you, 
dear other heart, how I know? It is because of the 
longings, even from the days of childhood, unde- 
fined and misty then, but growing stronger and more 
definite as the years brought knowledge and under- 
standing. And it has always been seeking you, always 
you. 

You will not think these little letters strange, because 
you will know, you will understand. Here you will find 
waiting you, when the day comes that you are to 
see them, all that a girl’s heart has tried to tell you 
of itself through the long years when it was gain- 
ing a knowledge not only of itself, but of you, as 
well. 

Other women picture the one whom they shall love as 
molded only after the full glory of physical manhood. 
With me, it is your heart alone that I seek to picture, 
that I long to know. In your manhood, in your self- 
control that will show itself not only in your strength 
but in your tenderness as well, will my heart glory in 
you and in the love God has sent to us. 


2 


THE LOST LEGION 


Long, long ago (for I must begin at the very begin- 
ning with you), the child’s mind — your Margaret’s 
mind — peopled her wonderland with kind and tender 
creatures who lived well sheltered by the gentle nature 
of the little princess whose belongings they were. In 
the make-believe land, I, of course, was the princess. 
Sometimes in the darkness of the night, your Margaret’s 
fancy even then would find a touch of loneliness, though 
she knew it not by its name. But never was there room 
for fear or for dread — the heart of a child can dream 
of nothing that is not part of itself. 

II 

Long ago it was a doll’s house with its low roof and 
its tiny panes of glass. It is a doll’s house now, only 
the longed-for luxury which I firmly deny to everyone 
but myself has made me construct a most beautiful 
window-seat piled high with soft cushions and other 
rainy-day comforts — a book to hold idly in one’s lap 
while the thoughts go out as they used to in the old days 
to the dreams that make real things possible. 

How hard it is to apply the happy, happy rules of 
my imaginary world to life, and how inexpressibly glad 
it is to glide away from that which ties one down and 
burdens one with an overwhelming load. I start from 
the doll’s house as of old, and go on and on through the 
sunshine of happy-hearted things. The path leads over 
the hill to where Truth that is everlasting, and Purity 
that can never be soiled, and Trust that is never bitter, 
and Strength that has never failed — old friends all — 
are waiting there by the wayside. 


THE LOST LEGION 


3 


III 

It is a long, long while I have waited, but it cannot 
be too long, for it is the time that I need to get myself 
ready for your coming, oh, heart of my heart ! 

Nor is there any room for loneliness in this life of 
mine through all the days to come. I shall fill them 
not only with useful work, which of itself makes for 
cheerfulness, but the time which I must spend waiting 
to find you will seem neither long nor lonely, because of 
my sure knowledge of the great happiness that is to 
come when I do find you. After that — oh, how can I 
begin to tell you, how can I find the words to put on this 
poor page a chronicle of the things which we shall share, 
the things that we only could share, because God in the 
beginning finally and once for all made us for each 
other ? 

In these letters I want to show you the heart in me 
that you are to come to claim. And you are to know its 
weaknesses and the timid, foolish thoughts out of which 
there has to grow the wiser, braver woman who is to 
help you. 

IV 

How sure I am that I shall know you ! There never 
has been the slightest possibility of a doubt about that. 
And best of all, you will have been waiting too. Often- 
times I am awed, my dear one, over the wonderful ways 
of God — leading both of us day by day through an un- 
known wilderness, safely, surely at last to each other. 

When I find you, I shall not be frightened in the least. 
I shall just be inexpressibly happy and content. It will 


4 


THE LOST LEGION 


be enough to wait with only the knowledge of my hav- 
ing found you to comfort you and to comfort me. 

How many queer fancies a girl has! All the hopes 
that I have found and clung to, that have made me try 
to help those about me, that have made me unselfish, 
have been but the stepping-stones by which I have tried 
to prepare myself for your coming and for the broader 
life that we will lead together. I have wanted this 
time. I have wanted to get to know myself. I have 
needed the years to become sure of the everlasting things 
of life. While I can never be worthy of such a blessing 
as God will give to me when he lets me have you and 
your love, nevertheless I have tried to go my part of 
the way alone and truly, that I might learn some little 
measure of the love He has for us, for you and me, my 
other heart. We will count no hardship too great, no 
burden too heavy to outweigh the blessedness that our 
love has brought to us. Thus there will be no test 
through the years that can do aught but bring us closer 
together. 

V 

I want to build a high wall about my little house, 
about the doll’s house of old. A sea-wall, I shall call it, 
for it is to keep the sea wind from blighting the tiny 
garden around the doll’s house, holding it safe in the 
warm sunshine, making it snug on bleak days. It is like 
warming one’s heart with happy thoughts to have a sea- 
wall about one’s doll-house. Just because of it, the 
hearts-ease and rosemary, the poppies and forget-me-nots 
flourish more readily, just as they do in the remembrance 
that has been sheltered by love from the adverse wind 


THE LOST LEGION 5 

of disappointment and waiting. Are you smiling now, 
at your Margaret-a-dreaming in her Poppy Land? 

VI 

I want you just to myself. I want to put your tired 
head against my breast. I want to call you all the dear 
names that a woman calls the man she loves. 

VII 

The garden I am planting about the doll’s house is 
growing famously. It has been said that youth is the 
Springtime of life. And as the Springtime is the time 
to plant, so I am starting in the days of my youth all 
the bright, sunny flowers that my imagination can find, 
for I want to grow about the doll’s house only those 
things that will live as long as the life of its occupant, 
and that will carry with them through the days and the 
years, comfort and good cheer. Some gay, some plain, 
for the plain ones are to last the best, and the gay ones 
but make the whole garden the brighter. Shall I tell 
you of my friends? For they are my friends, all of 
them, the trees, the bushes, the buds, and the flowers, 
for the doll’s house looks out only upon a world of 
friends. When the day is gray, the wall about the 
garden shields the doll’s house from the wind. When 
the day is gay, the wall about the garden holds the sun- 
shine until it is filled to the brim and overflowing. So 
the garden of your Margaret’s imagination, so the secret 
places of her heart, are shielded and kept safe, are filled 
with quiet happiness while she waits. 


6 


THE LOST LEGION 


VIII 

On the hearth in the doll’s house I burn only drift- 
wood logs, some of which have come floating in to me 
out of the great Sea of Happiness. Thus the leaping 
flames kindle good cheer in my heart and the idle fancies 
take pleasant shapes. Driftwood logs do not all come 
from the Sea of Happiness, for among them are those 
that are still wet with despair and tears, tears of sorrow 
and of broken-heartedness. Thus it is that sometimes 
the fire upon the hearth only smokes and smolders and 
goes out, leaving the room cold and cheerless and the 
heart forsaken. But you and I meet it all cheerfully. 
We know better, we two together, for the fire that is 
kindled on the hearth by the touch of love brightens 
and warms and fills us with that which only makes our 
eyes seek each other in complete understanding. 

IX 

It may be that the dreams will change with the passing 
of Time. Wiser folk tell us that the evolution that has 
led us to where we are will not stop with the present. 
So perhaps it may be that after a time the log fire will 
burn on chilly afternoons in the doll’s house, while I, 
with my cup of tea and a simmering teapot on the low 
table beside me, will watch the faint, slanting sunbeams 
creep across the floor. It will be November then, the 
November of the heart, of the dreams, of the time when 
the doll’s house will soon be closed forever. Yet, after 
all, even this is not quite complete, for mingled in the 
fancy of old maids and young come babies’ faces, and 


THE LOST LEGION 


7 


they will cheer me then as now. I will wait until it is 
November. To-day it is May, and the babies’ faces 
lead me into the sunshine and so the doll’s house is 
bright again. 

Let us go out into the garden, my friend, and there in 
the soft earth (though it is chilly yet) we will plant the 
seeds that in June are to be gay flowers to match the 
gayness of our day-dreams. And so we will love the 
little flowers while we may, and on this early Spring day 
plant their seeds in the sure knowledge of the bloom 
that Time will bring. Sometimes I fancy they are little 
hopes, little joyous hopes that in their season may blos- 
som into happy realities, yet which are not of enough 
moment to be worthy of the slower, steadier growth that 
weathers all the seasons and that lasts as long as life 
itself. 

There, I have quite forgotten the old maid and the 
November afternoon. But, remember, I love her, nor 
am I afraid, for in the doll’s house there is only com- 
fort for young hearts and old. 

X 

Dear Heart, to-day I am twenty-four. Do you know 
I have never known a man whom I have mistaken, even 
for an instant, for your image ? I know so many men, 
but no one of them is You . 

XI 

Do you know how like a little child your Margaret 
still is? When we find each other, I am sure your great, 


8 


THE LOST LEGION 


strong heart will look out upon the world so bravely, 
filled with high courage and fine purpose in all it does, 
that it will scarcely have patience when you read in these 
pages my confession of timidity, almost of fear. Some- 
times I stand quite alone, and God sends to me a clearer 
glimpse not only of this life, but of the greater life be- 
yond, a vision of endless days, of space, of the Eternal 
Things. Why should I shrink? I tell my heart it is 
because I am still alone ; and that when I have found v 
you, your strength will reach out and encompass me all 
about, and hold me up so that I, too, will be strong. 
But it will not be till then that life and death, and the 
things eternal, have lost their awe to me. 

XII 

Far back in the dim ages when I was a little girl, I 
used to care even then, dear — did you know? I was 
but a mite of a child with pig-tails and a frock that 
buttoned up behind, with thin legs and an aggravating 
way of skipping instead of walking. But I had my 
world (our world, I mean, dear one), even as now, 
quite separate and apart from everything and everyone 
else. Ah, how I clung to it! Can you guess what it 
means, now that womanhood has come? And even to 
the childish eyes was given the power to see in the sun- 
shine, in the peace that comes with the twilight, in the 
little times apart from other children in solitude, the 
things that you would want to find in me. I knew them 
all then, dear, even as I do now — to be good, to be un- 
selfish, to give even my tiny strength to the fulfilling of 
all these commandments. 


THE LOST LEGION 


9 


XIII 

Suppose when we do find each other, that, through 
some circumstance over which we have no control, it 
will be God’s will that you and I must go on forever in 
this world alone? I wonder if then I will pray that you 
may never know, and that for me alone will be the 
harder task? I wonder! 


XIV 

When I was a very little girl — in the long ago, when 
my dear mother was still here, when night would come 
and the time to sleep — I remember the spotless white 
of my bed, and my mother’s face as she told me good- 
night. Even then it was an eager, loving little heart 
she left behind her in the darkness. Ah, me ! What 
comfort was I to her? Perhaps some day it may be for 
me to know, too. Then, as now, safe from everything 
that can disturb, sleep came like a great Comforter, and 
close behind followed hope renewed and readiness for 
the day to come. Who shall say that it will not be so 
when the Long Sleep comes? Who shall say that the 
One who sends it to us does not find us like weary chil- 
dren, waiting to close our eyes that we may waken again 
to the joy of a new day? There will be just such a 
quiet pausing, a little waiting between this life and the 
passing to the Great Beyond. For a moment there will 
be a time for retrospection and introspection, just as in 
the autumn of the year Nature stands still and contem- 
plates the bounty of her harvest and the great good the 
year has wrought. And so the days pass down, one 


IO 


THE LOST LEGION 


upon another, while the land lies sleeping in the mellow 
sunshine of October, waiting for the winter. Some day 
you and I will stand together just thus, and those who 
know us will go passing by and nod in friendly greeting. 
While they pass, we will look upon them with calm 
eyes, you and I, and our hearts will say, “ All this and 
more is true — we have lived, we have loved, we have 
been true to the good, we have been true to each other, 
we have been true to God.” When they come again, they 
will not find us standing, still waiting, for the Great 
Reaper, reaping among the flowers, will gather us to 
Him, saying, “ For these things I have loved them.” 
So we will fall asleep, and after a bit, the last lingering 
flowers of memory will wither, and the thoughts that 
were once ruddy with life and afterwards happy mem- 
ories, will become the faint shadows of the spirit of 
Remembrance. But as for us, the spring from which 
our memory flows is fed by eternal waters. So we will 
hail the Autumn of the year as we have hailed the 
Spring, dear one. 


XV 

That which is true! Sometimes my whole being 
yearns for the eternal truth, for the splendid, funda- 
mental, everlasting truth. You alone, dear heart, will 
understand the gospel I am wanting to teach. To do 
the greater thing is relatively easy, for the approbation 
of one’s friends, the approval and acclamation of those 
all about, make one equal to the great emergency, 
the great test. But all of us cannot be in the center of 
the stage, and after all is it not nobler, far, far nobler, 


THE LOST LEGION 


ti 


to struggle alone and unapplauded, to be true in the 
little things, to take one’s weary way unfalteringly with 
the burden of loneliness, of petty trials, of discourage- 
ments? I build up, step by step, a great and splendid 
philosophy of happiness that has for the broad pedestal 
on which it stands the homely virtues of love and kind- 
ness, of gentleness and self-control, and the willingness 
to seek the good in all things, however small. Right 
here in the garden about the doll’s house are some little 
evidences, as you will find when you come, that your 
Margaret has tried to contribute, through the short days 
of her life, genuine examples of this gospel that she 
wants to preach. After all, living is the best kind of 
preaching, and one who lives in the doll’s house can 
well afford to send cheerfulness and quiet and content 
far abroad through the land to help. And the spirit of 
restlessness only creeps in through the crevice under the 
door when the time I must spend waiting for you, my 
dear, is just a little bit long. 


XVI 

If I had an attic (the doll’s house has none, you 
know), I would fill it with the fancies of little children. 
The dreams of those of us who are old in years are but 
the shadows of the imaginings of childhood. The rosy 
horizon that always stretched out before, the hopeful- 
ness, are, when we are old, but shrivelled, faded fancies 
— all that is left because of the disappointments the 
years have brought. Like faded flowers and old gowns, 
like tender romance, there in our attic we will place the 


12 


THE LOST LEGION 


fancies of childhood, and undisturbed they can rest 
through the days in peace and quiet, with the rain fall- 
ing softly on the roof, — through dark nights of 
Winter, with the wind seeking to put its icy hand on 
the warmth of their remembrance, on the glow that 
clings to sacred things. It is thus that I am making 
myself ready for the great happiness of your coming, 
that I may be worthy of the long years you and I are 
to spend together — together, just you and I, through 
days upon days of useful, happy things. 

XVII 

When it is sunset, I like to sit on the doorstep of the 
doll’s house and listen to the voice of my own thoughts. 
Just over there the sea lies, all quiet and unruffled. The 
sea and sky are fading and everything is quiet but the 
soft hush of the waves on the beach. At such a time, 
even the philosophy that the doll’s house teaches feels 
the touch of a new loneliness. It is not only the wait- 
ing for you to come. It is not alone the wanting to find 
you. Rather I seem to be standing afar off, watching 
as a spectator. From the very doorstep of the doll’s 
house there spreads out in vast array the great torrent 
of humanity, of human life, of human energy. It 
passes so close to me that in the faces of the multitude 
I see the mingling of hope and despair, of failure and 
success, of the inevitableness of it all. And your 
Margaret, who does her work each day in the real world 
of real people, trembles and is afraid in the shadow 
world of the doll’s house. The very hush of all the 
earth about me is as though the world of real things 


THE LOST LEGION 


i3 


were waiting for a day of awful judgment. The sea, 
my own beloved sea, is changed to a treacherous lurk- 
ing foe, and in its depths I see the struggles of drown- 
ing men, as they are hurried farther and farther beneath 
its surface, to become at last horrible, twisting, mis- 
shapen things. 

But even as I sit thus, thinking, the calm of evening 
has succeeded the uncertainty of twilight, and the lights 
of the town shine out in friendly, genial greeting. So 
always the lamps of home burn steadily and reassur- 
ingly. Far, far out at sea, it may be that you, too, have 
been watching sea and sky through the sundown calm. 
The sails of the great ship have been flapping idly back 
and forth and the spars creaking and groaning as the 
ship rises and falls on the sea. It is night there too, now, 
and just as the darkness has settled over the dbll’s house 
and the garden, so it has come over the lor»dy waters, 
over the bosom of the sea, to you. And the night wind 
has ruffled the sea, and the idle flapping of the sails is 
steadied, just as the fair wind of remembrance steadies 
our thoughts and sets us, like the ship, once more on our 
true course. 

And so these morbid, unwholesome fancies of mine 
have gone, and fear has given place to hope, and cour- 
age and reason have come again. As I close the door 
of the doll’s house and lock it securely and turn to slip 
away in the darkness, to take my place agaiij where God 
has made me to labor and to wait, I tell myself that He 
has brought you, my true love, one day nearer to me, 
and so after all it is a thankful heart your Mar- 
garet has to-night, for all is well with you and with 
her. 


l 4 


THE LOST LEGION 


XVIII 

Why is it that when I am sitting in church my mind 
will fall a-wishing that it were afternoon, and that I 
were safe in the doll’s house? For I have something 
I want to think about, something I want to tell 
you about, something that I saw to-day. It was 
a holy sight, and one from which I crept silently 
away, lest I disturb one of God’s good scenes. A 
homely, forlorn kitchen, if you please; a clean, rosy- 
faced baby, serenely sleeping, its mother sitting beside 
it. On the stove the dinner was cooking, and every- 
thing waited the coming of the good man. No matter 
what my errand, my knock was unnoticed, for the 
woman’s mind was following her heart down the years 
of the life of the sleeping babe. I looked in upon her 
through the open door, and then I could not see, for 
your Margaret is a silly, silly girl. But you under- 
stand, don’t you, dear? Of these mysteries of life and 
these glimpses of God, you know the meaning, as my 
heart does. 


XIX 

A gray day, without even a shadow to mark the pass- 
ing of the time — a driftwood fire and quiet in the doll’s 
house. All of which brings us, my dear one, to one of 
the most blessed, happiest words — solitude. You and 
I have never confused this precious word with loneli- 
ness, nor have we felt it through all this time that we 
have been wandering in the deserted places. Rather 
have we, from the security of our own hearts, found 
it an opportunity to contemplate for a little space of 


THE LOST LEGION 




time the passing world, ourselves, and the deeper things 
of life. Sometimes, when I am not quite sure, I seem 
to find in you only the more rugged things, the eager- 
ness for strife, for doing. But all that passes from the 
image of you that is in my heart and in its stead comes 
the sure, splendid picture of your own gentleness, which 
is the tender side of your manhood. The happiness of 
not being afraid to tell you of these things ! And, more- 
over, I am so certain that some day you will read them. 

A gust of east wind that has not behaved itself has 
come bouncing down the chimney, carrying the blue 
smoke out into the room, and for a moment the danc- 
ing flames have hidden themselves. How often it is so 
with all of us! The two arch enemies of Happiness, 
Doubt and Fear, come tumbling down upon us, and 
even the warmth of our hearts is lessened, and the gray 
of utter weariness clouds our very souls even as the 
smoke now does my eyes. I can see you smile as you 
read of your Margaret’s cheerfulness that tries to be 
unfailing. But this she must write to you — it is just 
then when Doubt and Fear begin to proclaim the com- 
pleteness of their victory that the old undying forces of 
Love and Confidence and Good Cheer come dancing in, 
and the draught of Hope and the burning of the new 
fuel of Endeavor vanquish the east wind, and the 
smoke takes Doubt and Fear and the weariness of life 
up the chimney with it. 

XX 

In olden times maidens worshiped from afar. But 
to-day one at least, here in the doll’s house, waits 
quietly and hopefully for the great coming. When you 


i6 


THE LOST LEGION 


have come, you will find her no encumbrance in your 
doing all you must, but rather the one to whom you can 
go in strength and happiness as well as in weariness and 
sorrow. Nor need you have misgivings. 

XXI 

Once upon a time, up many flights of bare stairs and 
dark landings, there lived a girl in a tiny room. This 
was for no other reason than that she might follow her 
beloved Art. A faded gown, and gloves with holes in 
their finger tips, poor food and less and less of it, were 
the price of her paints and brushes and of her daubs 
that only told of a Soul hungering for the Unutterable 
Things. The lonely months of work in the bare room 
and the pinch of poverty counted as nothing because of 
the great glory of the world the girl found in herself. 
It was the very striving of the soul to leave behind it the 
poor mortal body and to express itself in the high 
realms of Art. And the heart of the girl found its 
very unhappiness was the measure of its desire. One 
dreary day, no more so, perhaps, than many that had 
gone before, a brisk step mounted the stairs and paused 
before the artist’s door. When she opened it, she saw 
standing in the darkened hall the figure of the Boy. It 
was true he had only a freckled face and kind eyes and 
hair that would curl. Nevertheless, he was the Boy, 
and palette and brushes slipped from her hand down 
upon the floor at the sight of him. But the Boy only 
said, “ I have come for you.” And the Girl, standing 
close beside him, whispered, “ I am ready.” 

So here is something more to be happy about. 


THE LOSE LEGION 


l 7 


XXII 

All the earth is frozen. The bare ground, the hurry- 
ing hither and thither of the brown leaves, the deep 
purple of the woods, the leaden sky, tell of the bitter 
cold of Winter that has settled over the land. On 
such an afternoon, contentment and peace of mind are 
the best hearth-comrades. They are here beside me 
now before the fire in the doll’s house. The Winter 
afternoon is waning. The sun itself is but a lighter 
spot in the dull gray of the sky, and the wind, coming 
in from the east, tells of snow that is out over the sea 
and that before night will be falling over sea and land. 
As I look through the tiny panes in the broad window 
behind the window seat, the garden about the doll’s 
house looks forsaken. Everything lies cold and dead. 
Dear, it was a Winter time such as this in your 
Margaret’s heart and soul until there came to her 
the certain knowledge of you — a living, mortal you, 
and since that day, even though I have not found 
you yet, my whole life has taken new hopes, new col- 
ors, brighter ones, as the world does in the Spring- 
time. 

Even the doll’s house will be glad when at last the 
snow comes — deep, drifting snow settling in every chink 
and cranny. The light is growing dim in the doll’s 
house as I write. So the winter day will come when 
together you and I will watch the firelight and feel 
the night creep in about us, and so together we will 
look down through the years and beyond to the world 
of everlasting life. 

There, the snow has begun. 


i8 


THE LOST LEGION 


XXIII 

Hundreds of years ago, a youth (so Father Marchesi 
tells us) found vent for the emotions that filled his soul 
by singing as he walked in the fields or along the river’s 
bank. Sometimes the song was sad, and sometimes the 
song was lonely, but never was the song glad. You 
who understand me so well will find no strange con- 
tradiction in this, for the songs of all the world are to 
me sad, just as happiness itself and love find their ever- 
lasting joy in the things that are touched with care and 
sorrow. It is a long journey down through the cen- 
turies from the white cloisters of San Marco to the 
doll’s house, yet the same thought which gave to Savo- 
narola the impulse for the work of his life stirs my 
poorer self even now. To you, strong man that you 
must be, how the same infinite pity for the injustice, the 
pitiless crushing burden that life must be to so many of 
the human race, oh, how this stirs you, too! Because 
you are a man, it means but greater effort to free the 
weary from the inevitable, relentless fate that seems to 
crush out the very chance of Heaven. Poor mortals 
that we are, we cannot see the greater, more glorious 
emancipation God works by this very slow and tortur- 
ing process. 

Poor fellow! How sorry I am for you! Your 
Margaret’s philosophy is like that of most women, I 
dare say. You won’t mind if I am just a little bit wist- 
ful about it, for it means so much to me. Half senti- 
ment, perhaps, half-shrinking from the stern, splendid 
realities of truth and virtue that are found along the 
hard road of self-control and right living. But in the 


THE LOST LEGION 


19 


philosophy of women — in mine, at least — the desire to 
shield, not myself, but those I love, fills my being — to 
keep away from them, from you, beloved, the unkind 
things, the false, the petty little artifices that entrap, 
deceive and hurt. Thus, as always, since the world 
began, the gentler nature of a woman tries to cover 
the rougher one of a man, that, through their union, a 
more tender strength, a higher humanity, a more God- 
like living may be reached. 

The cardinal virtues, as named by Plato, — Justice, 
Valor, Temperance and Wisdom — seem almost un- 
worthy to you and to me, for we go back to the far-distant 
time and accept and make our own those of the Bud- 
dhists, — Chastity, Generosity, Gentleness and Humility. 
And best of all, the Buddhists sought no middle course 
as a compromise to conscience, no bridge between the 
virtues and the vices, which they named with equal clear- 
ness — Lust, Pride, Anger and Avarice. There is no room 
in the philosophy that we find in the doll’s house for 
the hopelessness of Omar Khayyam or of Schopenhauer. 
Perhaps our notions about life are a little bit old- 
fashioned and homely, for you and I will make our 
happiness real, we will expect it to come through sorrow 
and through our struggle, and the blessedness of our 
faith makes us satisfied, for we know that the joy will 
come in God’s good time. So we are waiting now, 
getting ourselves ready for the great day which will 
bring us to each other at last. 


20 


THE LOST LEGION 


XXIV 

There are to be no more letters. The doll’s house, 
the driftwood fire, your Margaret, are waiting. So it 
is — so it shall be — always. 


Enter the Mortal Forms we call Ourselves. 
Exit the Real Selves. 




CHAPTER I 


Neptune Lynch took down the wooden shutters 
from the window of his store and placed them care- 
fully behind the counter. Going to the door, he stood 
gazing up the empty street. The morning sunlight, 
stealing over the tops of the mountains, flooded the 
Bitter Root Valley and Paradise. Everywhere it was 
silent with the silence of dawn. Even the man was 
subdued, awed, by this overpowering, penetrating still- 
ness that filled those measureless mountains and their 
valleys. 

At last the man spoke softly, lest his voice be not in 
keeping with the quiet about him. 

“ I reckon,” he drawled to himself, “ that them as 
named this here town ‘ Paradise ’ never calcalated what 
kind of a place the fellers as came out here to find gold 
was a-goin’ to make of it. A name that’s a good ways 
from Heaven ’d be more likely in these times. Yet 
mornin’s when I see the old sun creepin’ over them 
peaks and all this here Valley is still asleep in the shad- 
der, it makes me feel like I was back home agen in the 
Old Blue Ridge afore the war. Yet I reckon this here 
was a likely enough place till the railroad come. Even 
dirty Injuns couldn’t spoil the old Rockies.” 

Taking another observation of the street and the 
mountains and the sky beyond, Neptune Lynch retired 
behind the counter and sat down on an empty box. 

23 


24 


THE LOST LEGION 


Apparently everyone else in Paradise was asleep. In- 
deed, so deep was the quiet that the whole world might 
well still be in slumber. In that part of Montana 
there was no reason for early rising. The great ranges 
of the Rocky Mountains stood like barriers, shutting 
out all things that would break the solitude that was in 
keeping with their grandeur. 

Neptune Lynch lit his pipe and gazed about him re- 
flectively, as does one who, at peace with the world and 
himself, looks out upon it all as a spectator merely, and 
from some safe seclusion. 

The little store was filled with general merchandise. 
An empty mail-bag lay across the counter, the letters in 
a neat pile beside it. There were but five. 

Neptune Lynch leaned forward, and taking them up 
in his rough hand, looked over them reflectively. 

“ Three letters fer the little girl,” he said, and put 
them back on the counter. One of the others he opened, 
and going over to where a long, yellow account-book 
hung from a hook driven in the wall, he began to com- 
pare the items of the letter with its well-thumbed pages. 

A long period of silence followed. Then a brisk 
step on the porch in front of the store caused Neptune 
Lynch to look inquiringly toward the open door. A 
moment later it framed a boyish figure with blond hair 
and laughing eyes, the rough garb but adding pictur- 
esqueness to his strong, young frame. 

“ Mornin’, Nep,” he said; “ any mail fer Mis’ 
Margaret? ” 

Neptune Lynch returned to his accounts without 
deigning to reply. Then, after an aggravating silence, 

“ I reckon as how p’rhaps there is, and then again, 


THE LOST LEGION 


25 


p’rhaps there ain’t.” Then turning sharply to the 
figure in the doorway, “ What business is it o’ your’n, 
I’d like to know, Bud Caven? Who give you aw-thor- 
ity to come here about sunrise a-askin’ fer the school- 
ma’am’s mail?” 

Bud Caven laughed. His was a laugh that was 
merry and wholesome and good to hear — the laugh of 
a man who has kept his heart young and clean. 

“ I was a-goin’ to remark,” he replied, “ as how 
perhaps you got out o’ the wrong side o’ the bed this 
mornin’, but now that you’ve asked me, you sure enough 
set up all night just to be as mean as a man kin. You 
won’t talk to her like that when she asks, I’ll bet ! ” 

The retort drawing no response from the tall figure 
behind the counter, Bud laughed again and disappeared. 
A moment later, Neptune Lynch heard him galloping 
up the road. 

“ Boys never did have no sense,” he commented re- 
flectively, and then went on with his accounts. So ab- 
sorbed was he that he did not notice the figure of a little 
Indian child who slipped quietly in and stood before 
him, with her black head just showing above the counter. 
He was interrupted by a small voice uttering a single 
word — 

“ Crackers ! ” 

Neptune Lynch put down his book and leaned for- 
ward over the counter, surveying his small customer 
gravely. The child eyed him steadily and unwinkingly, 
as became her race. 

“ Crackers! ” she repeated. 

Neptune Lynch shook his head. 

“ No! ” he said severely. “ No! Your father, big 


26 


THE LOST LEGION 


Injun, heap bad man, drunk — down to Ike Mossman’s. 
No crackers fer him ! ” 

But the child only repeated her word. 

“ Crackers ! ” 

Neptune Lynch pushed his hat on the back of his 
head and, drawing himself up to his full height, looked 
down at the mite of humanity before him. 

“ I guess it’s likely,” he said, “ as how Mis’ Mar- 
garet’s been learnin’ you the use of that great and noble 
language that is the greatest attainment of this here 
civilized race. I reckon,” he went on, “ as how Mis’ 
Margaret taught you that very word.” 

The child nodded. 

“ I’ve often told her,” Neptune Lynch continued, as 
though the child could understand, “ that it don’t do 
no good to try to learn an Injun. All on ’em is bad. 
I calcalate nothin’ can’t ever be done to make anything 
good out of an Injun. What’s the use of Uncle Sam 
(turning toward the tin cracker box that stood on the 
shelf behind him and opening its lid), what’s the use 
of Uncle Sam’s spendin’ thousands of dollars tryin’ to 
make an Injun think he’s as good as a white man? 
Why, there’s nothin’ as bad as an Injun, ’ceptin’ nig- 
gahs, and down where I come from they lynch niggahs.” 

Neptune Lynch leaned over the counter again with 
two crackers in his great hand. 

“ And yet,” he said to the child, “ and yet you come 
stealin’ in here in those ’ere little moccasins of your’n, 
your bright eyes — I know what she’d do ! Often says 
she to me, says she, ‘ Mr. Lynch, ’t’ain’t the fathers and 
mothers we can help, but it’s the little Injuns,’ and I 
guess that’s what you are — a little Injun. If she was 


THE LOST LEGION 


2 7 


here, she’d give you these here crackers. I calcalate 
that’s what she’d do. And if that’s what she’d do, 
that’s what Neptune Lynch does, and he don’t make no 
explanations to nobody, neither.” 

He held the crackers toward the little girl, who took 
them shyly and, hiding them with a quick, furtive 
gesture at the sound of a heavy step on the porch, drew 
nearer the counter and nearer Neptune Lynch, as 
though seeking his protection. 

The newcomer eyed the child and the man steadily. 
Then he said: 

“ Well, I be damned if there ain’t Neptune Lynch, 
formerly of Shenandoah County, Virginia, formerly 
Daredevil Nep of Longstreet’s Cavalry, the best shot 
in Missoula County, Montana, turned soft-hearted and 
givin’ crackers to a papoose! Well, I’m done! ” And 
the speaker sank on the top of a barrel as though ex- 
hausted. Neptune Lynch regarded him severely, shak- 
ing a long and ominous finger the while. 

“ You shut up, Ike Mossman! ” he said. Now the 
finger pointed at that unfortunate individual. “ You 
shut up! Do you suppose Neptune Lynch cares what 
a whiskey-drinkin’ sot like Ike Mossman says about 
him ? Here, little ’un,” thrusting his hand into the box 
again and bringing forth another cracker, “ here, take 
this and run along. But don’t let me catch you givin’ 
no crackers to that dad o’ your’n. He’s a bad Injun, 
and Neptune Lynch ain’t got no use fer a bad Injun.” 

As the child went out of the door, Ike Mossman rose 
from the barrel-head and crossing the store, stood in 
front of Neptune Lynch with only the counter between 
them. 


28 


THE LOST LEGION 


44 Whiskey-drinkin’ sot!” he said. “Yes, you’re 
right. That’s what I have been. But you won’t have 
no cause to call Ike Mossman out of his name again. 

I don’t wonder you’re surprised — I was surprised! - 
Why, time and again I’ve come over them lonely moun- 
tains, through blindin’ snow and cold — God, how cold ! 
— jest to get a drink o’ whiskey at that very Happy 
Days Cafe I own now. But I’ll tell you one thing, 
Neptune Lynch ! If you ever see Ike Mossman drunk 
again, I want you to take this here gun (laying his great 
revolver on the counter) and shoot him like you would 
a dog that was mad! ” 

Neptune Lynch was dumb with astonishment. 

44 Well, I be ! ” he drawled, at last. 

Ike Mossman looked at him and grinned. 

44 Them’s my sentiments, gents,” he said with a 
gesture. 

44 Ike,” said Neptune Lynch, holding out his hand, 

44 you don’t need to say no other word to me. I cal- 
calate to know what’s done it. It’s her — jest as it’s 
Mis’ Margaret Gair as has been the beginning of every- 
thing that’s good that the folks of this town, yes, and 
of this here whole County, has ever done. Why, it was 
her f }) he went on, 44 as made me give them there crackers 
to that Injun kid, jest afore you come in. You ought 
to know as how there ain’t nobody hates Injuns worse’n 
I do, and you know how many times I’ve argyed with 
her about it. Yet, says I to myself, as I see’d that little 
Injun standin’ in front of my counter, says I to myself, 
if Mis’ Margaret was here, she wouldn’t say nothin’, — 
you know that, Ike — she’d only look at me, much as to 
say, 4 Ain’t you, you great big man a-standin’ there, 


THE LOST LEGION 


29 


goin’ to give that little Injun kid nothin’ and her 
a-askin’ you fer crackers?’ And so,” said Neptune 
Lynch half-apologetically, “ I jest give that little 
one some — fer herself, you understand, — and I 
ain’t ashamed fer you nor none o’ the boys to know 
it.” 

Ike Mossman lounged easily against the counter. 

“ Jest so,” he said, “ jest so. She don’t say nothin’ 
— not a word. She never come to my saloon like some 
of these here preachers, sayin’, ‘ Here, Ike Mossman ! 
Don’t you drink no more whiskey ! ’ She never said 
nothin’ at all to me about it, yet I know she don’t want 
me to, and I’d rather have her think Ike Mossman was 
straight and decent than to have all the gold that was 
ever washed down through this here Bitter Root Valley. 
Why, day afore yesterday, I was standin’ in front of 
my saloon and along she come on her way down here, 
to mail a letter or somethin’, I reckon. When she sees 
me she stops, she does, and holds out her hand — me 
a-standin’ there in my shirt-sleeves, havin’ jest washed 
up the bar, and says she, ‘ Good-afternoon, Mr. Moss- 
man,’ — jest like that — and shakes hands with me. I 
was that surprised, I could only say, ‘ How-d’ye-do, 
Mis’ Margaret.’ Then she went on down the street 
like the lady she is. And says I to myself, ‘ You can 
thank God that a pure woman like that should notice 
you, Ike Mossman — you that’s been the scum of the 
earth since you was that high.’ It come to me strong 
and sudden, standin’ there where she left me, as how 
she’d like it if I tried to be decent and good like her. 
That’s what she done to me. Why, I’ve seen her talk 
to a dirty Injun about his home and his little kids and 


30 


THE LOST LEGION 


how he ought to give up whiskey and go to work, and 
what’s more, he done it. Mis’ Margaret’s ” 

The sound of a pony galloping up to the store inter- 
rupted the speaker. A moment later a young woman, 
hatless and breathless, entered and stood before the two 
men. 

“ Good-morning,” she said merrily. “ I’m glad to 
see that the business men of Paradise are getting about 
earlier these days. It’s a sign of the times — it means 
that the restless East has come over the mountains and 
stirred us up.” 

The two men stood with their hats held awkwardly 
in their hands. 

u Good-mornin’,” said each in turn to Margaret, 
while their glances shifted uneasily as they struggled to 
regain their composure. 

“Any letters for me this morning, Mr. Lynch?” 
she asked. 

“ I reckon there most certainly is, Mis’ Margaret,” 
replied Neptune Lynch, reaching forward and picking 
up the three letters that lay in the pile together. 

Margaret Gair took them from his outstretched hand 
and slipped them into the pocket in the front of her 
leather skirt. Then she buttoned the little flap over 
the top of the pocket and patted it caressingly. 

“ What has it been this morning? ” she asked, look- 
ing inquiringly from one to the other. “ Politics or a 
horse-trade? ” 

“ Well, the fact is,” began Neptune Lynch in his 
deliberate drawl, “ the fact is ” 

Margaret shook her head. 

“ No,” she replied laughingly, “ you must not begin 


THE LOST LEGION 


3i 

that way. Whenever you say, ‘ the fact is,’ then I 
know that Neptune Lynch, Esq., General Storekeeper 
of Paradise, Missoula County, Montana, is trying to 
conceal something, and I strongly suspect it is some- 
thing of which he is ashamed. Now, sir,” she went on, 
turning to Ike Mossman, and assuming an air of stern- 
ness, “ we’ll see if you can do better.” 

Ike Mossman glanced about him furtively, as though 
seeking some means of escape. He looked at the tall 
figure of Neptune Lynch standing behind the counter, 
smiling broadly at Margaret. Then Ike Mossman’s 
eyes sought the girl’s fairly, and he, too, laughed. Yet 
it was a laugh that was not as good to hear as Bud 
Caven’s had been, for somehow the stain of the sin and 
uncleanliness of both heart and mind choked it and kept 
it back. 

“ It’s the truth you’ll have from me, Mis’ Margaret,” 
he said. “ It certainly wasn’t hoss-trade that me and 
Nep was talkin’ when you come in. And it certainly 
wasn’t politics. I guess,” he went on hesitatingly, “ I 
guess it was religion we was talkin’. At any rate, it’s 
as near religion as we ever get to in this here town of 
Paradise.” 

Neptune Lynch stood gazing steadily down at the 
girl before him. Nor was his expression unlike that 
which had come to him that very morning in the door 
of his store, as he had watched the sun rise over the 
mountain tops. 

“ I calcalate,” he drawled, “ that them’s the truest 
words you ever said, Ike Mossman.” 

“ We ought to find it easy to talk of such things,” 
said Margaret Gair, “ because we’re so near to heaven 


32 


THE LOST LEGION 


up here. I was up long before dawn this morning, 
and took my pony over the trail to the other side of 
the mountain where I could look down the Sweetwater 
Valley. I thought as I stood there that up here, in these 
dear mountains of ours, God lets us come very close to 
Him, if we only want to. So I was glad — glad to live 
here in Paradise. But now I must hurry along, or else 
I’ll have to go to school without any breakfast. Good- 
by.” 

She was on her horse before either of the men could 
move. They both hastened to the door and watched 
her as the pony galloped up the street. Then, as with 
a common impulse, they turned and looked at the place 
where Margaret Gair had been standing. With a fur- 
tive glance that assured him his companion was not 
looking, Ike Mossman reached over and covered with 
his great hand the spot on the counter that Margaret 
had touched. 

“ Glad to live in Paradise ! ” he said to himself. 
“ Glad to live in Paradise ! ” 

Neptune Lynch gazed at the glaring advertisement 
of an Eastern manufacturer hanging on the opposite 
wall. 

“ Nearer God up here in the mountains ! ” he said. 
Then a long silence fell upon them both. A cheery 
voice roused them from their reverie, as Bud Caven 
drew his horse sharply to a halt before the door and 
leaned from his saddle that he might get a clearer view 
into the store. 

“ Has Mis’ Margaret come fer her letters yet? ” 

A long arm waved him away threateningly. 

“You go to hell! ” said Neptune Lynch. 


CHAPTER II 


As her husband entered, Mrs. Craft turned toward 
him sharply. 

“ She’s gone again, Mat.” 

Mat Craft looked at his wife apprehensively. 

“ You don’t say! ” he ejaculated. “ I must find her, 
and that mighty quick, too. ’Tain’t safe fer a young 
thing like her to be off alone over them lonely mountain- 
trails afore sun-up. Like as not some of them drunken 
Flatheads is prowlin’ ’round, and if harm come to Mis’ 
Margaret, I’d never forgive myself.” He walked to- 
ward the door. 

“ There ain’t no need fer your bein’ so oneasy,” said 
his wife, shaking a long, bony finger at him. “ Some 
of us women take better care of ourselves than you men 
do. Besides, Mis’ Margaret can shoot and ride as well 
as anyone. Keep your shirt on a while. She’ll be 
a-comin back time to git her breakfast and go to school. 
I want to tell you, Mat,” Mrs. Craft went on more 
gently, “ it’s a mighty queer girl she is, and that’s sure. 
Why, jest you look here into her room and see the 
knack she has o’ fixin’ things up and makin’ them pretty 
like. Queer? Why, it ain’t no name fer it. More’n 
that, twicet in a week she’s got up in the middle o’ the 
night, as you might say, and rode away on her pony 
through all that dreadful lonesomeness out there on 


33 


34 


THE LOST LEGION 


the mountains. Twicet in a week ! ” she repeated 
slowly. “ When she come back the first time, right 
here into my kitchen, her face was that shinin’ and 
glorious — why, I never seen nothin’ like it in all my 
life ! There she stood lookin’ at me — seeded like 
minutes — without never a word. Then she says, sort 
of gentle and soft like, says she, ‘ Mis’ Craft, Mis’ 
Craft! ’ jest like that, — ‘ I’ve been miles and miles over 
the mountains jest now, as far as Sleepin’ Child Creek, 
and oh, it was wonderful — jest wonderful. Why, I 
never lived till this mornin’,’ says she. ‘ This beautiful 
world ! Did you ever imagine anything half as beauti- 
ful, Mis’ Craft?’” 

Mrs. Craft glanced swiftly at her husband and noted 
with high satisfaction that he was thoroughly impressed 
by her words. But she expected that — for what man 
was there in Paradise who was not more than eager for 
a word with Margaret Gair or about her? Mrs. Craft 
continued reflectively. 

“ Feelin’ as how I ought to be a little stric’ with her, 
’count of her havin’ no mother and bein’ here all alone 
in Paradise, with no other woman but me to go to, says 
I, 4 I’m fearful ’fraid, Mis’ Margaret, to have you out 
there on the mountains in the dark. Wasn’t you? ’ 

44 4 Afraid?’ she says, as though not understandin’, 
4 afraid of what? ’ 

4 4 4 Why, Flatheads,’ says I, 4 or mebbe some wild 
animal.’ 

44 4 I ain’t afraid of Injuns,’ says she, 4 and as fer wild 
animals, I never thought of them.’ Then she turns to 
me, sober, and her eyes set on mine, and she puts her 
hands on my shoulders, and there we two stood a-lookin’ 


THE LOST LEGION 35 

at each other. 1 Do you know what I do think of ? * 
says she. 

“ Somehow I couldn’t say nothin’, so she goes on, ‘ I 
was a-thinkin’ of them poor men that come here years 
and years ago when all this was just wilderness, with 
these here rivers flowin’ through the valleys all empty 
and silent since the beginnin’ of the world. And I 
couldn’t help wonderin’ about God lettin’ them men 
find their way over these here great mountains, and why 
He wanted them to. Then after a minute it come to 
me why He did. It was so that you and me, Mis’ 
Craft, and all the rest of the world, could come to know 
these here beautiful places, and make our own char- 
acters grow more beautiful jest because we had seen 
them. Why,’ says she, ‘ it was jest like a man paintin’ 
a picter or writin’ a book. He makes up the things out 
of his head all good and beautiful and true, and then 
you and I come along and we see the picter or we read 
the book and somethin’ in us knows it’s the truth. God 
does it thataway so that we’ll learn never to find it too 
hard to go on tryin’.’ 

“ With that she comes into that there very room of 
hers and shuts the door. As fer me, I didn’t have no 
word to say — it was all that beautiful — what she’d 
found out in them lonely mountains that mornin’, and 
somehow the way she told it to me made me feel like I’d 
been a-thirstin’ fer them very words all my life — 
a-waitin’ fer her, jest a chit of a girl, to tell ’em to me. 
You and me, Mat Craft, has lived here years and years, 
and never thought of one of them there things — though 
I know they’re all true.” 

Matthew Craft had stood motionless listening to his 


36 


THE LOST LEGION 


wife, nodding his head slowly in acquiescence. Now 
that she had finished, he went slowly out, still nodding 
and muttering to himself. Then the door closed behind 
him. 

Mrs. Craft went into Margaret’s room. Going to 
the table by the window, she examined the articles lying 
there. She had done this a thousand times before, al- 
ways noting their indescribable air of something that 
she dimly realized to be lacking in herself. They were 
typical to her of that far East, that land of cultivation 
from whence they had come, and as always there rose 
within her a great longing for the unattainable. Stand- 
ing there, she could but know that her own life had been 
very bare and empty because it had lacked these very 
things. She looked about her and sighed. 

Margaret Gair’s room seemed bare indeed, with its 
spotless wooden floor and its simple furnishings, but a 
closer inspection showed, as it always does, how clearly 
a room reflects the character of its occupant. The 
walls, covered with relics of mountains and forests, the 
low bed, told of the days of active life in the sunshine, 
and nights of dreamless sleep that together made mind 
and body wholesome and vigorous. Margaret’s dress- 
ing-table with its tiny mirror showed her daintiness. 
Nor was this of the kind that is put on as our clothes, 
for suitable functions, but that which springs from 
innate refinement alike of body and mind. But it was 
the view from the only window that made one forget 
all else, for mountain and sky stretched away in an un- 
surpassed panorama. No wonder the girl dreamed ! 

The sound of horses’ hoofs in the dooryard caused 
Mrs. Craft to turn to the window. She saw Margaret 


THE LOST LEGION 


37 


dismount while Matthew Craft led the pony away. 
The next instant the girl entered the kitchen, at the 
door of which Mrs. Craft met her. She seemed to 
bring all the sunshine in with her. 

“ Good-morning ! ” she said gayly. But Mrs. Craft 
shook her head in exaggerated severity. 

“ This is twicet, Mis’ Margaret, that you’ve gone off 
before sun-up by yourself ! Why, I was that worried, I 
was sendin’ Mat to find you ! ” 

The girl laughed. 

“ I know,” she said. Then she added gently, u And 
I thank you for it. I’d been here five minutes earlier 
if I had not stopped at the post-office for these,” draw- 
ing the letters from her pocket. 

Mrs. Craft seated herself, while the girl stood smil- 
ing down at her. The older woman felt the contrast 
between the glowing, youthful form before her and 
her own, that was tired and thin and worn of frame 
and spirit. Yet there rose within her, from somewhere 
far back through the years of drudgery, the memory of 
her own girlhood, and the recollection brought the 
warm flood of life to her heart again, so that these two 
could understand each other despite all the differences. 

“ Do tell! ” exclaimed Mrs. Craft. “ Some letters? 
Why, that must be six or seven this week.” 

Margaret nodded. Then she examined the letters 
critically. 

“ One of them is from my sister,” she announced. 

“ Well,” said Mrs. Craft emphatically, “ ain’t it 
about time fer her to write? How many letters have 
you sent to her, I’d like to know? And as fur as I 
know, there’s only been one letter from her sence that 


38 


THE LOST LEGION 


what came when you was sick, a-askin’ you to come to 
New York to her weddin’ to that doctor. Which re- 
minds me,” Mrs. Craft went on impressively, “ that I 
saw somethin’ about him in the newspaper. Yes, I be- 
lieve it’s the very same man — somethin’ about a opera- 
tion or somethin’. Anyhow, the paper said it was my- 
ra-cu-lous. That there doctor husband of your sister’s 
must be a mighty smart man.” 

“ I really believe he must be,” replied Margaret 
thoughtfully. “ But then, you know, I have never met 
him. It does seem strange not to have seen one’s only 
sister married, but no doubt Edith never missed me. It 
may be she was glad I was not there, if she thought of 
it at all, for she has often told me that I have never been 
sufficiently impressed with her friends and their social 
importance. What wonderful campaigns she must 
have now with her husband’s wealth at her disposal. 
She would find me sadly out of place among her fine 
friends.” And Margaret pointed to her leather skirt 
and laughed. “ The only similarity between us is in 
our voices.” 

“ But them dresses in your trunk! ” exclaimed Mrs. 
Craft resentfully. “ That beautiful red one — I’d jest 
love to see you have it on, Mis’ Margaret! ” 

A knock that fairly shook the door of Margaret’s 
room interrupted their conversation. It was followed 
by Mat Craft’s genial voice. 

“Hi, there, you two! Talkin’ about clothes when 
there’s a hungry man out here waitin’ to be fed ! ” 

Mrs. Craft and Margaret glanced guiltily at each 
other. Then Margaret opened the door. 

“ It certainly is an imposition, Mr. Craft,” she said. 


THE LOST LEGION 


39 


“ Moreover, I too am as hungry as can be. Ten miles 
over the mountains and back before breakfast certainly 
gives one a sharp appetite.’’ 

Mrs. Craft pushed the girl aside and bustled into the 
kitchen. 

“ Everything ’ll be ready in two shakes,” she an- 
nounced. “ Mis’ Margaret and you can set down right 
away, Mat.” 

“ I must get ready first, Mrs. Craft,” said Margaret, 
re-entering her room and closing the door behind her. 

Now that she was alone, Margaret opened her sister’s 
letter, smiling as she did so at the bold handwriting. 
Once long ago her own letters had looked like that — 
for the two sisters had been educated at the same select 
school in New York, where that particular style of 
handwriting was presumed to indicate strength of char- 
acter. But the handwriting was not the only thing 
Margaret had left behind her forever, on the day, now 
more than six years before, when she found herself at 
last actually free to commence the long-coveted plan of 
living out her own life in usefulness, where, until then, 
it had been tied down by the all-encompassing bands of 
conventionality. 

Margaret seated herself on the edge of the bed and 
examined the letter again critically. Even the style of 
note-paper was characteristic. The dreams, the hopes, 
the happiness, the lives, even, of these two sisters could 
never lie along the same channel. Yet that which was 
still Edith’s life had originally been her own as well, and 
the unforgettable fact took Margaret back across the 
long, long miles to the great city by the sea, scarcely 
realizing that the remembrance of it was lonely only 


40 


THE LOST LEGION 


because the place had once been her home. Then she 
opened the letter. 

“ My dearest Margaret [she read] : Such a calam- 
ity has come upon me ! I do not know how I shall ever 
survive it, for sooner or later I shall have to give up 
everything that makes life worth living. The reason 
for it all is that in a little while I shall be poor. Think 
of it, Margaret! And pity me! The shame of having 
to give up my position among my friends — and it is all 
Worthington’s fault! Sometimes people have told me 
what a brilliant husband I have and what he has done 
for his profession, but the real question is, what he has 
done for me. Instead of considering me, he has gone 
ahead with his work until now he is blind — blind as the 
result of overwork. Had he not been selfish, had he 
considered me, it would never have happened. Oh, 
how thankful I am that I have no children to share 
the disgrace that is come upon me, no children to stand 
by and see their mother dragged down from her high 
place in our most select circle, to become a mere house- 
wife drudge ! Sister mine, you are the only one who 
can understand even partially what this blow is to me. 
My marriage, brilliant though it was (for I admit it 
to you that Worthington’s family was socially above 
our own), was but a stepping-stone to all that was de- 
sirable that lay beyond. When we were young girls, 
you were so filled with your queer notions about your 
duty in life and your desire to give up everything for 
someone else, that I am perfectly certain that even 
though by this time you may perhaps see how foolishly 
you have let happiness slip away from you, still you 


THE LOST LEGION 


4i 


will be unable to realize fully what I have to bear. 
I simply cannot live through the shame of it. How 
Worthington could have been so thoughtless of my 
welfare I cannot understand. Why, I believe he even 
went so far as to work night after night (when he must 
have felt the blindness coming on) over some case he 
had — a child, I believe it was; trying to save its life, 
they say, though I am a little skeptical about that, for 
I feel instinctively that they only tell me that to make 
me more comfortable. Suddenly something went snap, 
and there he was, totally blind. I suppose that it was, 
of course, more or less hard for Worthington. Things 
like this always are to men. They’re such unreasonable 
creatures with their all-pervading selfishness and ego- 
tism. In the few times I have seen him since his blind- 
ness came, I have been convinced that he has never so 
much as dreamed that / am really the one who suffers 
most. Not that he has said much about himself, but I 
can readily imagine what his thoughts are. 

“ Will you, too, desert your sister, now this calamity 
is upon her? In a few months our money will be 
gone, for we maintain quite an establishment here in 
town. 

“ Now that his blindness will prevent his knowing 
anything about it, I propose to spare nothing in keep- 
ing up my engagements for the short season that re- 
mains. It will be the least bit easier to drop out of sight 
when Spring has come and our set will have begun to 
scatter. If you would only think of your sister a little 
and come East for these short weeks, you could look 
after the household, leaving me free to get the last 
happiness out of life I will ever be able to have. I can 


42 


THE LOST LEGION 


agree that Worthington will not bother you much, for 
I never see him, nor need you, if you wish. It may 
be that the time will be shorter than I think, for as I 
have intimated, it is only a question of how long the 
pocketbook lasts. And when it is all over and I am 
buried alive in some country town, you can go back 
to your savages and your school-books. Only, I im- 
plore you not to leave me alone in my hour of need. 
I know you will not fail me in this. 

“ Your broken-hearted sister, 

“ Edith. 

“ Postscript : Wire me when to expect you, and don’t 
breathe a word of this to anyone.” 

Margaret Gair rose and, crossing the room, stood by 
the window, looking out over the valley at the moun- 
tains with the bright sunlight upon them. Then she 
turned again to her sister’s letter. The shame, the pity 
of it all ! The hold this empty life had on Edith’s heart 
filled Margaret with something very like a longing to 
share with Edith the truer things she herself had found 
among the rough men and women who had helped her 
to find the way God wanted her to live. How pitiful 
it was! Nor was there a word of sympathy for this 
man, surrounded as he was by total darkness. “ It is 
all Worthington’s fault!” So even with her hus- 
band, Margaret realized that Edith had failed to 
meet him on even the simplest ground of mutual 
understanding. 

Margaret recalled a paragraph from Edith’s long- 
prior letter in which she had written characteristically: 

“ I have always insisted upon calling him Worthing- 


THE LOST LEGION 


43 


ton, which is so much more distinctive than the plain 
name of John. You may remember that his mother 
was a Worthington.” 

With a sigh the girl put the letter away, and went 
in to her breakfast. 


CHAPTER III 


Three days later, two horsemen slowly made their 
way into Paradise. The Chinook wind sweeping in 
from the far-distant western sea touched with its warm 
breath the mountains that were still in the grasp of 
Winter, and in an instant transformed them into their 
green dress of Spring. 

The men and horses toiled wearily along, the bright 
afternoon sunlight shining down upon them. At last 
they stopped before Neptune Lynch’s store. When the 
two men entered, they found Neptune Lynch nailing the 
top on a small box, the packing of which had absorbed 
his attention throughout the entire day. Neptune 
Lynch surveyed his neat and carefully completed handi- 
work with ill-concealed satisfaction. Then he turned 
and greeted them. The two men looked from Neptune 
Lynch to the box, and then at each other significantly. 
At last, one of them untied the kerchief from about his 
neck and unbuttoning his coat, reached within and drew 
^ a small package from the hiding-place in which it had 
lain through the long, weary miles. It was tied in clean 
tissue paper with a white ribbon about it. Ike Moss- 
man (for it was he, in spite of the dirt) placed the pack- 
age carefully on the counter, first using the handker- 
chief to remove any possible speck of dust from the 
counter itself. Then he turned to his fellow-traveler. 


44 


THE LOST LEGION 45 

“ Bud,” he said in a thick voice, “ I reckon we’re in 
time. The Overland ain’t due till five.” 

Bud Caven stepped forward and drew a leather bag 
from his pocket and laid it down beside Ike Mossman’s 
package. Neptune Lynch as solemnly placed his box 
on the counter, too, and then, leaning back with his 
broad felt hat on the back of his head, gazed at the 
three packages in high satisfaction. Then he sighed 
so heavily that the other men shifted their positions at 
the sound. At that, he retired precipitately to the back 
of the store, where he blew his nose violently. Ike 
Mossman and Bud Caven looked at each other and 
nodded. 

“ Boys,” said Neptune Lynch, returning, “ I’m 
more’n glad you’re here in time. It’s a mighty long 
stretch from here to Hoss Plains and back, but I 
knowed you two would make it if it could be done. I 
jest couldn’t have stood your bein’ away. I got that 
thar narvous and upset like, fearin’ you wouldn’t be 
back, that I was scairt like a school-girl, afeard she’d 
come here to say good-by, and you wouldn’t be here 
to brace me up. And if you hadn’t,” shaking his long 
finger, “ and if you hadn’t, I’d sure ’nough made a fool 
of myself.” 

“ Aw, go on,” said Ike Mossman, derisively. “ You 
can bet I’d ’ve known what to say. I’d ’ve liked a 
chancet, I would. I’d ’ve said: ‘Mis’ Margaret, the 
other boys has gone over to Hoss Plains after a little 
gift fer you as is going away. They ain’t got back yet, 
but you know yourself it’s a long trail to Hoss Plains 
and back and they only got started last night. If they 
was here, they’d jine me in wishin’ you a happy journey 


46 


THE LOST LEGION 


and a safe return.’ ” And with that, Ike Mossman 
took off his hat with a sweeping bow to an imaginary 
Mis’ Margaret. Nor did he notice the deep contempt 
of his audience. 

“ What you givin’ us ! ” said Bud Caven. “ What ’d 
she think o’ that? That ain’t no way. That ain’t half 
high-soundin’ enough for one like her. Her sister’s a 
millionairess, and like enough she is, too, even though 
she does live on the measly few dollars she gets fer 
teachin’ school.” 

Neptune Lynch leaned over the counter and shook his 
rough, bony finger argumentatively at the two men. 

“ This, my friends,” he began, “ is a public occasion 
in this here town of Paradise, Missoula County, Mon- 
tana. Our most distinguished fellow-citizen and es- 
teemed friend is goin’ to leave on an important journey 
to the far East to visit sick relatives what needs her 
help. While I couldn’t ’ve said it if she’d ’a’ come afore 
you fellers come, now that you are here, I think I 
should be the one to make a sort of formal ad-dress and 
farewell speech, somethin’ like this ” — striking an atti- 
tude with his hand thrust into the bosom of his coat. 

Bud Caven jangled his spurs and drove them with all 
his might against the side of a barrel. 

“ Cut it out! ” he exclaimed. “ Cut it out! ” Then 
changing his tone, “ What ’ve you got in the box, 
Nep?” 

Neptune Lynch looked at his audience with a grieved 
expression. Then his glance swept about the store until 
at last it rested lovingly on the little box. 

“ You remember, boys, how often Mis’ Margaret 
spoke about the pure water from that spring round t’ 


THE LOST LEGION 


4 7 


other side of the mountain? Well, says I to myself, I 
calcalate it’s likely she won’t get nothin’ like that ’twixt 
here and New York. So I went ’round there this 
mornin’ and filled a big bottle full of it and put it into 
this here box. The intervenin’ space contains what I 
calculate she’ll like best — mostly and largely fruit 
crackers and a extra big pickle that I’ve been savin’ fer 
some time back. It’s true ” — he went on with a wave of 
his hand indicative of nothing in particular — “ it’s true 
that this here Overland Limited has one o’ them new- 
fangled dinin’ cars, but I reckon you can’t never depend 
on the vittles they serve. But Mis’ Margaret won’t 
be deceived by what’s in this box, fer it’s the best of 
Nep Lynch’s stock. If she was to fall sick,” he added 
in a lower voice, “ if she was to fall sick,” — the three 
men gazed at each other in dismay at the thought, — 
“ Neptune Lynch ’d never fergive himself fer havin’ 
let that little gal go out into the world alone, without 
proper food and comforts that he could ’ve provided 
her with.” 

The occasion and their love for Margaret Gair 
touched the hearts of Neptune Lynch and his listeners 
with the greatest sadness they had ever known, rough 
men though they were. The approaching parting with 
Margaret Gair lay heavily upon them, and the silence 
that ensued was more expressive than words. The 
wooden clock in the corner ticked the minutes slowly 
away. All over the world countless numbers of time- 
pieces were marking the seconds as they slipped from 
the eternity of the future into that of the past. Their 
faces, through the bright days, through the lonely 
nights, looked down on gladness and sorrow, moving 


48 


THE LOST LEGION 


with no quickened pulse at the approach of happiness 
nor halting at the sad times, but ever creeping onward, 
onward, relentlessly marking the passing of time. 

Far off there on the western slope of the Rocky 
Mountains, those three men found the minutes passing 
slowly enough. Now that the hour of Margaret Gair’s 
departure approached, the situation grew intolerable. 
Restless under the knowledge of what Margaret’s go- 
ing meant, Bud Caven rose and picked up the leather 
bag containing his contribution to her gifts. Opening 
it, he drew forth a new revolver, which gleamed 
menacingly. 

“ Of course they don’t do that kind of thing on Fifth 
Avenue, but I taught her to shoot,” he said half apolo- 
getically. “ This ’ll keep her safe, and it ain’t no 
child’s weapon, neither.” 

Neptune Lynch took the revolver and examined it 
critically. Then he passed it to Ike Mossman. 

u That ’ll do service when called on,” he said. 

“ A mighty likely little gun,” commented Ike Moss- 
man. 

Bud Caven returned the weapon to its case, making 
no attempt to conceal his satisfaction at his companions’ 
words. 

Ike Mossman took the package with the white rib- 
bon about it from the counter, holding it fearfully yet 
tenderly, as he might an infant. 

“ I’d show it to you, boys,” he said, “ if I could tie 
that there knot of ribbon again like it’s tied now. They 
done it that-a-way in the store over to Hoss Plains. 
There ain’t nothin’ round a bar I can’t do, but how 
they tie them bows and things I don’t see. But I’ll tell 


THE LOST LEGION 


49 


you what it is — it’s a shawl — all colors, mostly green 
and yellow. Oh, it’s a beauty! I seen it a-hangin’ 
in the window when I was over to Hoss Plains last Fall, 
and says I, ‘ That there shawl was made fer Mis’ Mar- 
garet. What’s more, it’s likely there ain’t another 
shawl like it in the whole of Montana. I’d like to buy 
that there shawl fer Mis” Margaret.’ That’s jest what 
I said!” 

Neptune Lynch and Bud Caven laughed. 

“ Oh, I meant if there was a proper occasion,” Ike 
continued in explanation, “ though I never thought it ’d 
come so soon. I wish it hadn’t never come, since it 
means that she’s got to go away from us.” 

He put the package down on the counter again. 

“ It hadn’t never ought to be ! We need her here, we 
do. Them little kids down to the school need her — we 
all need her. What’s more, she’s about all we’ve got 
here in Paradise that’s good through and through. I 
ain’t never been so broke up as since I heard this here 
piece of news. What do they need her there in New 
York fer, compared with the way we all need her here? 
This here sister business is all rot. Let her take care of 
her own home, I says, and leave Mis’ Margaret to take 
care of us.” 

Neptune Lynch drew himself up to his full height, 
^ and looked at Ike Mossman reprovingly. 

“ I reckon I’m ashamed of you,” he said. “ I surely 
am. I reckoned as how you’d try to look at this thing 
from a unselfish and high-minded standpoint. It ain’t 
what we want — it’s what it means to her, what she ’s 
got to stand, that counts. She loves this here place, she 
does. Them old Bitter Root Mountains is more to her 


5o 


THE LOST LEGION 


than all the rest of the world put together, and she loves 
us, too — us miserable, good-fer-nothin’, no-’count folks 
here in Paradise. Why, she’s jest give her whole young 
self tryin’ to make us better — that’s what she’s done. 
It’s goin’ to break her heart to go away from here. 
And what’s more, she ain’t never a-comin’ back, — 
you’re right about that, Ike. We might as well face 
that first as last. Them there New Yorkers ’ll appre- 
ciate her, they’ll give her what’s her due — which is 
more ’n Paradise did fer a long time. It serves us 
right — we ought to lose her, and what’s more, we’re 
a-goin’ to, once’t and fer all. And then, what’ll be left 
of us?” 

Absolute dejection descended upon and enveloped the 
three. But Caven could stand it no longer. He rose 
and went out on the porch and stood looking up the 
street toward the Craft house. 

“ She’ll be a-comin’ down soon,” he said to himself. 
“ Ike’s right — there won’t be nothin’ left here after the 
Overland pulls out this afternoon.” 

Boyish tears rolled down his cheeks. He brushed 
them away furtively. Then he sat down on the edge 
of the porch with his long legs dangling, and watched 
the tired horses standing motionless where they had 
been left in the dusty road. 

The silence of afternoon had fallen over Paradise. 
The sunlight quivered and glittered on the mountain 
peaks which rose higher and higher, one above the 
other, as far as the eye could reach. The mysterious 
wind that had brought the Spring with it of a sudden 
down the sunny slope and into the sheltered valleys, 
had left the thin, cold blue of the winter sky untouched. 


THE LOST LEGION 


5i 


The solitude of the mountains, which is the solitude of 
the sea as well, settled down upon Paradise, covering 
it completely, absolutely, so that it lay silent with no 
sign of life, while the long afternoon crept slowly on. 

The railroad station across the road was still de- 
serted, for it lacked an hour of train time. Bud Caven 
looked at the single track which crossed the main street 
of Paradise just below Neptune Lynch’s store, and then 
his eyes followed its curving line to the East, along the 
river’s bank, till at last it disappeared around the bend 
above the town. On and on he followed it in fancy, 
mile upon mile, across the mountains, across the plains, 
across the mountains again, to the sea. Years before, 
Bud Caven had shut from his mind the recollection of 
that far-distant East. But now that Margaret Gair 
was going back to it, the thought of his mother — Bud 
turned as though to shut the awakening memory from 
his mind. A glance up the street and he drew himself 
quickly together. Someone had come out of the Craft 
house and was walking quickly down toward the town. 

“ God ! ” he muttered. Then he started up the street 
to meet her. 

Margaret greeted him cheerfully. 

“ I heard you had gone to Horse Plains, Bud, and 
was almost afraid you couldn’t get back in time.” 

Bud Caven, hatless, walked beside her in silence. 
Margaret understood. 

“ I’ll be back soon, Bud,” she said. “ The very min- 
ute my sister can spare me I’ll get back to these dear 
mountains for the rest of my days. What will you 
do with me here when I get to be an old woman, Bud? ” 
she asked, laughing. 


52 


THE LOST LEGION 


Bud Caven shook his head. 

“ You won’t come back, Mis’ Margaret,” he said. 
“ The next thing Paradise ’ll hear of you will be that 
one of them Eastern fellers has married you. I used to 
see the kind, swell, educated — all that we ain’t. That’s 
the kind of man that’s meant fer you. There ain’t no 
one around here, not even Mis’ Craft, as is fit to be with 
one like you, Mis’ Margaret.” 

Margaret Gair stopped in the road and faced Bud 
Caven squarely. 

“ You are wrong,” she said quietly; “you are alto- 
gether wrong. Money and clothes don’t make a true 
gentleman, though I’ll admit a great many people think 
they do. There are just as many good men and women 
here as anywhere else — sometimes I think more. Much 
of the life in the East is but the effort to cover selfish- 
ness with a cloak of cultivation and refinement. Out 
here, it’s what a man does, and not who he is, that 
counts.” 

As Margaret spoke, Bud Caven raised his head, and 
the eyes that met hers were as steady and true as her 
own. 

“ That helps some, Mis’ Margaret — that helps a 
good deal. I ain’t never fergot that I come from the 
East, even though I was only a little bit of a chap when 
I left. I’ve got a mother there in New York some- 
where, who thinks I’m dead, I guess, and I am — to 
her. It was in West Eighth Street, over in old Green- 
wich Village we used to live. I wonder if you can find 
her, Mis’ Margaret; I wonder if you could see my 
mother? ” 

The years had come and gone since Bud Caven had 


THE LOST LEGION 


53 


put from him, as he thought forever, the intention of 
sending some message “ home.’’ Yet now the sight of 
Margaret Gair, the recollection, long lost, that came 
to him with the knowledge that she was going to be a 
part again of that which he himself had once known, 
gave him a sudden feeling of homesickness and longing. 
Nor could he hide the eagerness in his voice as his heart 
quickened at the thought. 

“ Why, of course, Bud,” replied Margaret, “ of 
course I could, and I will find her, too. How proud 
your mother will be when I tell her the splendid man 
you are and that some day you are going back to 
her.” 

Bud Caven shook his head. 

“ No,” he said slowly, “ no, I can never go back.” 
Then, after a pause: “ But you might tell her as how 
I was pretty straight and was gettin’ on well and pros- 
perous. I want her to feel as how everything is right 
with me. But you must tell her that if there’s anything 
in me that’s worth while, it’s you, Mis’ Margaret, as 
made it. Tell her that you’ve been mother and sister 
to me since the first day you come — and sweetheart, too, 
Mis’ Margaret.” 

Margaret Gair touched Bud’s arm. 

“ Don’t, Bud,” she said gently. 

The frank boyish smile lighted Bud’s face as of old. 

“ Just as you say, Mis’ Margaret,” he replied, “ but 
you’ll find my mother for me and tell her? ” 

“ Yes, and when I come back, I’ll tell you how very 
much she wants to see you, and then, some fine day, 
you, too, will go over the mountains and back to her.” 
Bud Caven shook his head. 


54 


THE LOST LEGION 


“ We’ll see,” he said. Then, “ The boys are waitin’ 
fer you down to the store.” 

Neptune Lynch and Ike Mossman were where Bud 
Caven had left them, still talking earnestly. Their 
words died on their lips, however, when Margaret en- 
tered. The awkward pause that followed made it evi- 
dent that they were still talking of her. Margaret 
smiled at them. 

“ Not working this afternoon? ” she inquired gayly, 
bent on making her going seem less sad, if she could. 

“ We was expectin’ you,” said Neptune Lynch, find- 
ing his tongue, but he could not keep his eyes from Mar- 
garet’s attire. Their girl was indeed gone, trans- 
formed in a day into an elegant lady. 

Margaret seated herself in her accustomed place on 
the low box beside the counter, while the men stood 
about. She looked steadily from one face to another. 

“ I will be back soon,” she said, reading their 
thoughts, “ and then we will all be happy for the rest 
of our lives, here in Paradise. So it won’t be good-by, 
but only auf JViedersehen , as the Germans say when- 
ever they expect to see one another again soon.” 

In the silence that followed, the three men looked at 
the articles on the counter and then inquiringly at each 
other. Each was waiting for the other to begin. At 
last, Neptune Lynch took the plunge. Seizing his box, 
he held it out toward Margaret. 

“ I reckon you know what I want to say, Mis’ Mar- 
garet,” he hesitated. Then, “ Here’s somethin’ fer you 
to take on your trip.” 

Margaret Gair looked up, a flush of pleasure lighting 
her cheeks. 


THE LOST LEGION 


55 


“ For me? ” she said. “ From all of you? ” 

“ No,” said Neptune Lynch, shaking his head slowly, 
“ I reckon as how this here is from Neptune Lynch 
alone.” 

Margaret took the awkward box in her hands and 
clasped it tight against the awe-inspiring gown. 

“ Oh, how good of you ! ” she exclaimed. “ How 
thoughtful! You cannot guess how proud and glad 
I am.” 

Neptune Lynch stood for a moment looking down 
into her face. Then something came between them that 
made it hard for him to see, so that he had to turn as 
once before that day and seek the seclusion of the rear 
of the little store. Margaret looked after him sorrow- 
fully. She did not want to hurt these good friends. 

Ike Mossman took the package with its wonderful 
white ribbon from the counter and held it out toward 
her. The speech and the gallant bow so recently re- 
hearsed were forgotten. Indeed, even the recollection 
of the preciousness of the package itself was lost. The 
man clutched it almost roughly and his hand shook. 
And Margaret saw and understood. She did not take 
the package, but put her hand on Ike Mossman’s coat. 

u Thank you,” she said. “ Thank you both. Every 
time I see these things they will tell me that each of you 
has kept his life straight and right here in Paradise 
while Eve been away, just as you would if I were here 
to see. You can be certain nothing will make me more 
eager to come back here than that.” 

Suddenly the sound of children’s voices and the hur- 
rying of many little feet on the porch interrupted her. 

“ Yet,” she went on, “ I want you to remember that, 


56 


THE LOST LEGION 


— that your lives are to be straight and right. As for 
myself, I am going only because I must, and I will soon 
be back again, because I want to be in my place, where 
I belong, here in Paradise.” 

The children were upon her now, clinging eagerly 
to her skirt. Some of them were crying. The last to 
enter was the little Indian girl. She alone watched the 
scene unmoved. At last she drew near Margaret shyly, 
and from within her waist brought forth the very 
crackers that Neptune Lynch had given her three days 
before. They were dirty now and one was broken. 
She held them out to Margaret. 

“ Goo’-by,” she said, and then turning, fled. 

Neptune Lynch had seen the incident, and as the 
child gave the crackers to Margaret, his eyes met those 
of Ike Mossman. The latter nodded understandingly. 

As though impelled by some unseen force, silence fell 
upon the group. Even the littlest ones stood motion- 
less — waiting, listening. Far down the Bitter Root 
Valley came the long, lonely warning whistle. At the 
sound Margaret’s courage came back to her and she 
smiled down at the little ones and then up at the faces 
of the men, and her smile was glad and reassuring. One 
and all tried to smile back again at her when they 
saw how brave she was. Margaret kissed each of the 
children in turn. Then she walked out on the porch, 
clasping the box and Ike Mossman’s package, with the 
children about her and the three men following close 
behind. As they left the store, they were joined by 
three white women and another, a squaw. They all 
watched Margaret intently and in silence. 

The long train drew in at the station. Without a 


THE LOST LEGION 


5 7 


word, Margaret shook hands with Neptune Lynch and 
Ike Mossman. 

“ It’s safer for you to stay here, children,” she said, 
and started to cross the road. 

Bud Caven dashed back into the store, and reappear- 
ing in an instant, caught Margaret before she had 
reached the middle of the road. In his hand was the 
leather bag. 

“ It’ll keep you just as safe as you’ve kept me.” 

Bud stuck the gift under IkeMossman’s sacred white 
ribbon, and he and Margaret walked on together to- 
ward the train. 

“ You’ll surely come back? ” he said. 

“ Surely, Bud.” 

Standing on the platform of the car, Margaret 
looked down at Bud Caven, bareheaded before her, and 
then across the road at the tall figure of Neptune Lynch, 
leaning against the post in front of the store. Ike 
Mossman and the children and the women were 
grouped in the road beside him. Margaret waved to 
them as the train started. Already they were lost to 
her view, and the girl turned and looked up the road 
to the house that had been her home for the six 
years. There stood Mrs. Craft on the steps by the 
kitchen door, waving a towel at the retreating train. 
Margaret watched until she could see no more. Then 
she went into the car. 

Twilight, falling at last over the mountains, found 
Margaret Gair weary and lonely, each moment further 
and further from Paradise and the Bitter Root Valley 
and the place where she had learned to know herself. 


CHAPTER IV 


It was raining steadily. Margaret Gair looked from 
the window of her cab out upon the gray and dismal 
streets of New York. The girl was homesick for her 
mountains, yet as she drove up town, the familiar 
streets, half forgotten, awakened memories of her 
young girlhood. Margaret’s thoughts went back to the 
days when the Gair house was at the height of its pros- 
perity, but that had been long before her father’s death. 
In those days she was a lonely, misunderstood child, nor 
could the girl help wondering if the same adjectives 
were not applicable to her now. 

The cab rolled on up town, and at last the dripping 
trees of Washington Square, the old brick houses, dull 
red and hospitable, the more so for the grayness of the 
day, greeted Margaret like the faces of old friends. 
She sighed as does a tired child at the sight of home. 
Then the Avenue stretched its long length before her. 

Long ago, when Margaret’s mother was a girl, 
Washington Square held the best of which New York 
could boast. But in these later days, when wealth 
alone is the criterion of the world’s refinement, the 
new people are not content with the wholesome com- 
fort and substantiality of the Square and its quiet 
streets. The six years Margaret Gair had been away, 
though short indeed, had been long enough in the his- 
tory of the restless city to let the great houses of the 
58 


THE LOST LEGION 


59 


rich spring into existence. Margaret knew well that 
she would find Edith in the most exclusive of these. 
She recalled now Edith’s words at the close of one of 
their many arguments in which Margaret struggled 
with her sister against the fate that threatened them 
both — of being swallowed up in the great throng that 
seeks social distinction. Edith had said: 

“ You are one of those who die young, Margaret. 
You will never have a good time at all. You are too 
good. The kind of men and women you want to know 
never lived, I guess. They are all the imaginative 
ideals that we find in books. Mother approves of those 
with whom we associate. Do you think you know bet- 
ter than she? ” 

To this Margaret had no reply, but her gentle heart 
still felt (even as she knew now) that there were men 
and women who had these other and higher ideals, and 
that when the Great Day should come in which God 
would judge and measure each human heart, those 
who had clung truly to the highest ideals they could 
find would not be found wanting. 

At last the cab turned from the Avenue and drew 
up before a great house such as Margaret had imag- 
ined and feared. Its very aspect was forbidding, con- 
trasting sharply in Margaret’s mind with the memory 
of their sunny home of long ago, far to the south 
in Washington Square. 

The man who opened the door apologized for his 
mistress’s absence, when Margaret announced her 
identity. He ushered her in, and his hurried disap- 
pearance was followed by the entrance of a maid, who 
led Margaret up the broad staircase to her room. 


6o 


THE LOST LEGION 


Edith, so she was informed, would not return until 
late in the afternoon, so Margaret, with the maid’s 
help, removed the evidences of her journey, and then 
tried to settle herself comfortably in the luxurious 
sitting-room that adjoined her sleeping apartment. 
Left alone, she noted the exquisite furnishings of the 
room, thinking how perfectly it represented Edith’s 
old standards — the ill-concealed complacency, the com- 
plete satisfaction with self, born of the consciousness 
that the material things about one are the most ex- 
pensive that money can buy. 

Margaret was restless. Somehow the silence of the 
great house was oppressive. Finally she could stand 
it no longer. She made her way downstairs and into 
the drawing-room. Darkened though it was, she 
could get a faint appreciation of its richness, yet she 
told herself that it was not Edith’s taste that had gath- 
ered together the treasures she found there. Perhaps 
it was Edith’s husband. Margaret wondered whether 
the house represented his wishes, or whether he had 
provided it in the hope of satisfying Edith’s whims. 
Margaret felt that she could gauge the quality of his 
manhood with some accuracy from the mere answer to 
this question. 

Behind the drawing-room was the dining-room, and 
at the sight of its massive furniture Margaret realized 
her sister’s delight in the mere possessing of these 
things, and how dear the prestige they brought was 
to Edith. Crossing the hall, Margaret entered the 
library. Beyond was the doctor’s study, into which 
Margaret passed quickly, and then paused while she 
noted the carefully kept instruments and the rows 


THE LOST LEGION 


61 


upon rows of books. On the great flat-topped desk 
stood a microscope and other evidences of the work 
of a busy brain. Then the girl looked at the broad 
hearth and the andirons and a great easy chair be^ 
fore them. Evidently, the brother whom she had 
never seen spent his leisure moments, as well as those 
of work, here. Strangely enough, all these things 
were not in keeping with the mental picture she had 
formed of John Ford. Measuring him by her knowl- 
edge of Edith, it had been easy to assume that Edith’s 
husband was a man whose prestige had been gained 
by his position in the world, rather than by anything 
he had done. While she had never stopped to think 
of it, unconsciously her mind’s eye had before it a 
dapper little man, unoffensive, and a favorite among 
women, one who gained their enthusiastic encomiums 
rather by reason of his sympathy than by his skill. 
What a comfort to the rich would such a physician 
be ! And moreover, was he not the husband of “ that 
charming Mrs. Ford,” with all that that implied in 
exclusiveness ? 

But now Margaret saw at a glance that this was 
a man’s room, where a heart and a head that were 
broad and strong and eager found their work and 
play. Contrary to the rest of the house, in this room 
everything was used. Then there stole over Margaret 
a sense of rest that she had not felt since she left 
Paradise. She seated herself in the comfortable arm- 
chair and tried to adjust herself to the new surround- 
ings. She was glad Edith was out, for it gave her 
time to prepare herself for the tale of disaster she 
knew she would have to listen to. Margaret could not 


62 


THE LOST LEGION 


help patting the soft leather arms of the chair as she 
leaned luxuriously back in it. How impassable was the 
chasm that separated her own life and this of her 
sister! Throughout the years in Paradise, Margaret 
had found neither time nor inclination to long for the 
luxury of her old home. Now that it had come to her 
> again, it only oppressed her, stifled her. Margaret 
was weary. The silence, the luxurious comfort of the 
great chair, began to have their effect upon the girl. 
All alone in a strange house! She felt like a tres- 
passer — yet it was her sister’s home, and the study in 
which she was sitting was that of the man who was 
her sister’s husband. 

Margaret’s reverie was broken by the sound of steps 
in the library. She could barely discern two figures in 
the dim light. Then she heard a quiet voice — one so 
familiar in its tone that she seemed to have known it 
always — saying : 

“ You may leave me here, James.” 

“ Yes, sir. Shall I make a light, sir? ” 

“ I can see just as well without, James.” 

“ I beg your pardon, sir,” was the reply, as the 
speaker withdrew. John Ford advanced confidently 
(as does one who is in a familiar room) towards his 
desk. Margaret Gair sat motionless. She realized 
that he was unaware of her presence. She sat there 
fascinated, watching, while there rose within her a 
great wave of feeling, at once of pity and of tender- 
ness, and of something more, at the sight of the strong 
man groping his way in the impenetrable darkness. 
Margaret noted John Ford’s strong figure, vigorous 
and well-knit. The sightless eyes were hidden behind 


THE LOST LEGION 


63 


black goggles, but above them she saw the fine fore- 
head and the waving locks of brown hair that almost 
matched her own. It was as though the very strength 
of John Ford’s mind and body in the full vigor of 
their manhood were but an added weight to the burden 
that had come upon him. 

The sound of his voice when he had spoken to his 
man had awakened the girl. There was no feeling 
of strangeness. She knew the voice, she recognized 
every feature of the man before her. She had known 
him as far back as memory could run. 

John Ford seated himself at his desk and so near 
to Margaret that she could have touched him. She 
shrank back into the very depths of the chair while 
she struggled uncertainly with a desire to escape from 
this unforeseen situation, and an unexplainable longing 
on her part to make her presence known, to tell to 
the man before her how completely she comprehended 
his struggle. 

John Ford bowed his head until it rested on his 
outstretched arm on his desk. Margaret noted again 
the broad shoulders and the splendid head. Even as 
she looked, the man began speaking slowly, brokenly, 
and Margaret’s heart stood still as she listened. 

“ How good it is to be alone, where there is no 
longer need to hold fast to my courage, no reason to 
maintain the pretense of being brave. Oh, my Father 
in Heaven, why am I of so little faith that it is im- 
possible, even when things are at their brightest, for 
me to believe that You have sent this that I may be- 
come a better man for it. I cannot help asking my- 
self why You should want me to be burned with a fire 


6 4 


THE LOST LEGION 


so terrible, even if in the end all that is unworthy within 
me will have been consumed. You know how great 
is my lack of courage, how I cry out for mercy in the 
terror of this darkness, and yet there has been this 
darkness of soul in me even while I could see. My 
longings for the ideal, my wanting to reach far above 
the things of earth, have made me feel that the heart 
that is in me was as wholly blind as my eyes are now. 
Teach me to find the way to bear it, for at least I am 
to be unselfish enough to spare those about me the 
knowledge of my burden. And after all, the loneliness 
is no greater than it was before; only then I had my 
work, my blessed work to fill my mind, to keep head 
and heart alike busy, helping others and so helping 
myself. But now ” 

There was a long silence. The girl and man were 
alike motionless as statues. Then John Ford raised his 
head, and, reaching out, felt about on his desk until 
he found his microscope, which he drew into its place 
before him, while his fingers ran lovingly and con- 
fidently over its parts, adjusting it as though his eyes 
were about to go on with their work where they had 
left off. The helplessness of his movements roused 
Margaret, not with pity, but with a stronger and 
deeper appeal. The whole activity of the man’s life — 
his hopes, his achievements, all were summed up and 
shown to the girl in the eager, restless fingers, wander- 
ing without result over the beloved instrument. Mar- 
garet’s heart rose to meet this which had come to her 
out of the unknown, unsought, this that God had sent 
to her. The very destiny of life, of her life and his, 
of the world itself, was revealed to her. Yet it was 


THE LOST LEGION 


65 


in the man who was Edith’s husband she had found 
the other self for which she had searched and waited 
through the years. 

A quick step and the rustle of a woman’s gown 
brought Margaret to herself again. A figure she knew 
at once as Edith’s paused in the doorway and turned 
on the electric light. At the sound, John Ford rose 
and turned towards the door. Margaret, too, rose, 
but the man did not seem to notice her presence. 

“ I thought you were never coming,” said Edith 
petulantly, by way of greeting. “ I was sure you 
had abandoned me.” 

Then, because of her generous, forgiving heart, 
Margaret took Edith in her arms and kissed her. 
“ Of course, I came,” she replied quietly. 

“ You must present me to your sister, Edith,” said 
John. 

Before Edith could reply, Margaret stepped for- 
ward and touched John’s arm. 

“ I am glad to know my brother,” she said simply. 

No one but John Ford noticed the quiver in her 
voice. He held out his hand. 

“ I know the sound of your voice,” he said. “ I 
know you.” 


CHAPTER V 


At the first opportunity Margaret left her sister 
and escaped to her own room. The awakening that 
had come to her filled her whole being, obliterating 
everything save the joy and sorrow of its realization. 
Moreover, it made necessary an instant readjustment 
of her whole life. 

Margaret threw herself upon the bed, her burning 
face buried in her hands. All else was swallowed up 
and lost in the great joy of love, for the first time per- 
sonified, that swept everything before it, now that the 
floodgate of her heart had been opened to receive it. 
Oh, that she might have time to understand, time to 
realize, time to think! How was she to take her 
place again in the world? How was she to face even 
her sister? Indeed, how could she face Edith, of all 
persons? 

Almost immediately, it seemed, she was summoned 
to rejoin Edith. Of course, the girl could but ac- 
quiesce. Pausing only long enough to remove some 
of the traces of her agitation, she hastened to Edith’s 
room, where the latter was dressing for dinner. 

“ I want you to go to the Opera with me to-night,” 
said Edith. “ I can’t think of leaving you alone, nor 
can I miss it, as everybody who pretends to be any- 
one will be there.” 


66 


THE LOST LEGION 6; 

“ But I don’t mind being left behind,” Margaret 
protested. 

However, Edith was not to be denied. 

“ It will suit me better to have you go,” said Edith, 
with finality. 

While Edith was speaking, Margaret’s attention was 
distracted by the subdued notes of a violin. As it 
chanced, the air was an old favorite of Margaret’s. 
Insistently, yet sweetly, the music made its way to 
the girl. Struggle as she could against it, Margaret 
found the music more self-revealing than even the 
meeting with John Ford itself had been. And yet she 
knew the musician was playing there, alone in his room, 
all unconscious of the tremendous significance of his 
music. She needed, as never before, to be alone. But 
Edith had no thought of allowing Margaret’s arrival 
to interfere with her own pleasure. Yet was it neces- 
sary that Margaret should struggle on with no respite, 
no chance to prepare herself for the terrible ordeal? 
God alone, in His infinite wisdom, holds the solution 
of things like this — it is for those who bear the burden 
He has thought best they should bear, to find but 
added faith, to trust, to believe, to rejoice even, know- 
ing that through it all no harm can come. 

Margaret’s reluctant consent having been gained, 
Edith turned with avidity to her own affairs. 

“ Why Worthington will persist in scraping away 
on that old violin of his, when he knows that it drives 
me half-distracted, is not to be explained even by the 
usual selfishness of men. Worthington and I have 
always had separate apartments since we have been 
married, but this violin playing makes me sorry that 


68 


THE LOST LEGION 


they are on the same floor. Of course, since his loss 
of sight, Worthington has been kept quite by himself 
and out of the way. It would be perfectly unbearable 
to have a blind man always stumbling about. The 
mere sight of him is such a shock to me that you may 
be sure I lose no opportunity of avoiding him. You 
can perhaps imagine now how terribly I needed you 
and how afraid I was you would not come, Margaret. 
I was so upset that I was ready to believe those Indians 
and cowboys you have adopted might send one of their 
number here to scalp me for my having so much as 
suggested your leaving them.” 

Margaret smiled. 

“ There was greater danger of my being unwilling 
to leave them. You’ve no idea, Edith, how happy IVe 
been there. But when your letter showed me that you 
needed me, I had no wish other than to come.” 

But Edith was already intent upon her next words. 

“ I must resign myself to my fate by the time it is 
summer. There’ll be just this one last round of good 
times, and then everything that has made life worth 
living will be taken away from me forever. Worth- 
ington once told me that the sale of the house would 
realize enough to keep us from starvation for the rest 
of our days, but he doesn’t dream of the unpaid bills 
that have accumulated since he became blind. Just as 
all my plans were going so smoothly! Worthington 
could not have brought upon me anything harder for 
me to bear. Oh, I love it so! You cannot guess how 
I love it! How does it seem to have your sister a 
notable leader here in New York? ” 

“ I suppose it has its attractions,” replied Mar- 


THE LOST LEGION 


69 


garet doubtfully, “ but now that your husband needs 
your attention, don’t you rather run the risk of neg- 
lecting him if you keep up your social duties?” 

“Oh, Worthington doesn’t mind! Besides, one 
simply cannot neglect a blind man, for there’s so little 
that he needs. The loss of sight cuts out so much that 
there really is nothing left for him to want. Besides, 
Worthington has always been provokingly indifferent. 
He never seems to feel very strongly on any subject. 
I have no doubt his days pass satisfactorily enough. 
His man James takes him out for a walk every morn- 
ing. In the afternoon he mopes about in his study 
in that stupid way of his, or scrapes on his violin in 
the music-room. That is something I simply cannot 
stand, so I always try to be out in the afternoon. He 
shuts himself up in his rooms in the evening and re- 
tires early, I guess. How fortunate it is I have no 
children ! ” 

“Isn’t your husband also entitled to sympathy?” 
Margaret could not refrain from asking. 

“ Why, perhaps it is rather hard for Worthington, 
though I can’t remember ever having heard him say 
so — but then, you know, a man always takes things 
hard. He will get used to it after a while. It is 
just there, my dear, that I thought you could help me. 
So often when I am out, people are thoughtless enough 
to ask me about Worthington. And they imagine all 
sorts of terrible things that are absolutely without 
foundation. Some of them have intimated even that 
I neglect Worthington. I expect that sort of thing 
from you, but it is hard to bear from strangers. It 
will sound so much better now that I can tell them that 


70 


THE LOST LEGION 


you are at home and are responsible to me for his 
being well cared for. Besides, I will be so much freer 
with you here. It is only for a little while.” 

Margaret turned away. She could but shrink from 
such heartlessness. Then she remembered that John 
Ford not only had borne it, but would have to endure 
it through all the years to come. Yet perhaps, after 
all, it was easier for him that way. But to protest was 
useless. 

“ Is there no hope of his regaining his sight? ” she 
asked, at length. 

“ I think Worthington had some such notion at 
first,” was the reply. “ For a while he was conceited 
enough to believe himself so skilled in his profession 
as to be able to solve the difficulty, though in the 
opinion of the best physicians his case was absolutely 
hopeless. Once Worthington suggested that I try 
to find something in regard to his case for him in one 
of those medical books. He was thoughtless enough 
to want me to read some of it to him. I was almost 
persuaded to try when I suddenly remembered the 
awful pictures I had seen in them. Of course, I simply 
could not, and told him so. Since then, I rather imag- 
ine he has given up the idea, which is fortunate enough, 
for there is no one to read to him except James, and 
I have no doubt that reading is not James’s forte. As 
for myself, I was perfectly certain that his case was 
hopeless from the very first. Everything that hap- 
pens affecting me is always perfectly hopeless. Per- 
haps even Worthington would admit now that I was 
right.” 

Edith paused while she arranged her hair critically. 


THE LOST LEGION 


7 1 


“ Worthington used to tell me we were spending 
all the money he earned, but he was so successful that 
I was perfectly certain his income would increase from 
year to year, so that I would not have to limit my 
expenses. But I never really had enough, for one must 
have the best here in New York, for appearances’ sake, 
if for nothing else. Everything is gone now, and more, 
too. Indeed, Mme. Louise had the effrontery to insist 
that I pay my old account before she would take my 
order for a new gown, when I stopped there 
yesterday.” 

Margaret thought of her own slender savings. 

“ Does it not seem,” she finally suggested, “ that it 
would be wiser, instead of keeping on until summer, 
to drop out of your world now and go quietly away 
with your husband, taking such resources as remain? ” 

Edith turned away. 

“ There,” she said half-tearfully, “ I knew you 
would begin to preach. You always were aggravating 
with those model plans of yours for someone else to 
live up to. Am I not giving up everything forever? 
Surely a month or so, more or less, will make no great 
difference, and it will be immeasurably easier for me 
to slip away after all the rest of my set have left town 
for the season.” 

No one could realize better than Margaret Gair the 
uselessness of trying to convince Edith. 

“ Have your good time,” she said, trying to smile, 
“ and get such pleasure out of it as you may. I will 
stay here with you through the few weeks you still 
have and look after the house for you and see that 
James does not neglect your husband.” 


72 THE LOST LEGION 

Edith did not notice the sarcasm. Margaret con- 
tinued: 

“ Then I’ll go back where I belong. Oh, Edith, 
how much you might have been saved, if we could 
have learned together a little of what it means to live 
instead of growing selfish and worldly.” 

“ There, there,” said Edith pettishly. “ You are 
always like this — so perfect, so unselfish yourself, so 
ready to criticise me. Pray spare me one of your v 
lectures, my dear Margaret.” 

“ You must forgive me if I have given you the im- 
pression that I thought I was more perfect than you. 

I have only been eager that both of us should find 
the right way to live.” Margaret excused herself and 
went to her room. 

The very house, with its magnificence and its at- 
mosphere of selfish indifference, fairly stifled her. But 
Margaret found that this was but something added to 
the mingled joy and sorrow that had come to her. 
The girl opened her window, and breathed in the cool 
air as eagerly as though it were that of Paradise. The 
long journey, the great awakening, up to which her 
whole life had been leading, had in an instant so revo- 
lutionized her very existence as to leave her with noth- 
ing to cling to but her absolute faith in God and in 
the love He had sent to her. 

But there was to be no such kindly thing as an op- 
portunity for Margaret to readjust herself to the new 
conditions. She hastened her simple toilet, but even 
before it was completed she heard Edith’s knock at 
the door. When she entered, Edith Ford looked at 
her sister in surprise. The high color, the soft brown 


THE LOST LEGION 


73 


eyes, the pure face that Edith had envied in their 
younger days, stirred the same feeling now. Yet there 
was something new about Margaret that night of which 
Edith was conscious, though she could not understand 
— a radiance, an indescribable sweetness that had never 
before been there. 

When at last the Opera House was reached and the 
performance had begun, the bright gowns, the faces, 
and the lights faded, as the music brought to Mar- 
garet Gair with a vividness too painful to be borne 
the vision of what life thenceforth was to mean. There 
was no self-pity in her thought, but rather her heart 
rejoiced that the burden was quite hers alone to bear 
— that John Ford knew nothing of it all. She saw 
stretching out before her the slow passing of the years 
among the mountains about Paradise, and the little 
house there that was to know the days and nights 
on and on until Eternity, with nothing in her heart 
but the knowledge of her love to comfort her. Like 
a lonely child, the girl turned her thoughts from the 
brilliant scene before her to the quiet of the desolate 
mountains and the silence. It had been in the silence 
that Margaret’s heart had grown to the consciousness 
of itself. It was in the silence that it had quickened 
to the fullness of life, to the depth of tenderness, to 
the breadth of understanding that God meant it should. 
And Margaret saw that it was in the silence of the 
years to come that God wanted her to live the noble- 
ness of love. There was the blind man alone in the 
great house. What was to become of him? What 
were the years to mean? Yet to her he was not a 
blind man, alone, forsaken, but the man to whom she 


7 4 


THE LOST LEGION 


belonged. Above the music and the voices, she seemed 
to hear the low, plaintive tones of John Ford’s violin. 
And it was weaving the thread of love tighter and 
tighter about her heart. Deep down, underneath the 
sorrow, she was glad. Perhaps at last, through long 
years, she would come to know that because of this 
very sorrow, this very burden that was all unbearable, 
she had learned the true worth of her loving. 

“ Margaret,” said Edith petulantly, as one of the 
intermissions ended, and the gentlemen who had taken 
the opportunity to stop at the Ford box made their 
departure, “ as usual, you have let your sister be prac- 
tically neglected, while you secured all the attention for 
yourself. Even now they are looking at you from all 
parts of the house. I had forgotten it was just this 
way from the time you were a little girl. One would 
think you would at least have learned more tact.” 

A sense of shame came over Margaret Gair, and 
she shrank back as though to be less conspicuous. 
She could not even bear the thought of being part 
of the vain display about her. On this never-to-be- 
forgotten night she could less than ever before find 
a place for herself in such a world. John Ford had 
not used his life thus, nor had she. Far above her, in 
the topmost gallery, Margaret saw the faces of those 
whose hearts were hungry for the music, and who un- 
derstood and loved it for its beauty and for what it 
meant. John Ford was one of these, one who loved 
the pure and the worthy, and who, unspoiled by suc- 
cesses, untouched by selfishness, worked ceaselessly for 
the things that were good. It was thus he had gone 
on, with no thought of self, till the great darkness had 


THE LOST LEGION 


;s 


come upon him. So God had wanted his splendid 
spirit to learn the still greater lesson — to school itself 
in patience and cheerfulness until the heavier cross 
could be borne courageously. But now — was Mar- 
garet’s coming to make the darkness more impene- 
trable, the burden less bearable? There was but one 
answer in Margaret’s heart to this. She could be 
his eyes, and more, she could seek and find for him, 
with infallible intuition, the things he needed to enable 
him to play his part again in a measure, to make it 
possible for him to take up at least a portion of the 
splendid things he had been doing for those about 
him. And then — and then, when Edith’s purposeless 
flutterings had perforce ceased, Margaret could slip 
away, and perhaps leave John better for what she had 
done during those few short weeks. Margaret’s sen- 
sitive nature could not but ask if all this were not a 

wrong toward Edith as well as unfair to John. The 
answer came as though a voice were speaking to her: 
“ You are to help him find the way to see! You are 

to help him find the way to see ! ” and this, even 

though in the finding he should be lost to her 
forever. 

At last, after an interminable time, so it seemed to 
Margaret, the performance ended, and they were on 
their homeward way. Now it was that Margaret’s 
self-control was taxed to the utmost, for Edith chat- 
tered incessantly. 

“ I wonder what it is,” said she, “ that makes the 
men like you so much? You will admit that I have 
all the style. I should be supremely happy if I at- 
tracted the attention you do.” 


;6 


THE LOST LEGION 


Then Edith went on and on about the incidents and 
gossip of the evening, of the thousand and one petty 
vain things that made up her world. Margaret was 
seeing now in their pitiful bareness some of the other 
things John Ford had to bear. Why had God wanted 
the man to find no corresponding nobleness in his wife’s 
' heart? 

When at last they reached home Edith went directly 
to her room. As Margaret mounted the broad stairs, 
just as she knew it would, there came the tone of John’s 
violin. 

Margaret paused before the closed door. To her 
fancy, perhaps it was, the music had a new meaning, 
one w r hich now seemed to tell her that the spirit of 
the blind man had, in the stillness of the night, risen 
above the pain and loneliness, and found peace. And 
the girl’s heart responded — in a moment she was trans- 
formed to the Margaret Gair who had ridden forth 
before the dawn that she might, in seeing the glories 
of the sky capping the glories of the mountains, find 
God. 

Fearing to delay longer in the hall, Margaret en- 
tered her own room. Safe at last from prying eyes, 
the girl stood motionless, her whole being intent on 
listening. Yes, there were the sounds of the violin 
still. All else faded as the music gathered up every 
thread of her life and wove them together into the 
love that bound her to John Ford forever and for- 
ever, yet at the same time liberating in her soul the 
knowledge of the complete union of her spirit with 
his. The music — the words — it was as though John 
himself knew and was speaking to her: 


THE LOST LEGION 


77 


“ Tief wie das Meer 
Soil deine Liebe sein ” — 

Yet John Ford did not know, nor could he ever 
know. He was but a blind and lonely man, caress- 
ing his violin, playing the simple melody that suited 
his mood, dreaming, perhaps, of Edith, of his wife, of 
the home that was to be. But the true nobility of Mar- 
garet’s heart rose to meet even this test that God had 
sent to her. Hours later, when at last she slept, Mar- 
garet dreamed that John Ford and she stood together 
looking down the Bitter Root Valley on Paradise, 
and then beyond the mountains toward the East. The 
night was coming. John pointed toward the Eastern 
sky. What he whispered to her she could not hear, 
but her heart understood and was glad. Then they 
were silent, watching the sky, till at last the stars 
shone down upon them. 


CHAPTER VI 


Margaret awoke the next morning to find herself 
already adjusted to the great change that had come. 
So it has always been to the heart that has waited for 
love to come and knock at the door, to the heart that 
has not wasted itself in vain things. 

Margaret asked herself no questions. It was enough 
that love had come. That the object of it was her sis- 
ter’s husband, that it was doomed through circum- 
stances to hopelessness, that she could never have a 
thought of any fulfillment, counted as nothing. The 
one desire that filled Margaret’s heart was to help him 
as best she could and then slip away to bear the sorrow 
alone. While her heart asked to be loved, the worthi- 
ness of her own love made her still able to be glad 
that John Ford did not know and could never know, 
and so the loneliness and longing would be all for her 
to endure alone. What troubled Margaret Gair most, 
when returning consciousness brought with it the 
knowledge of the change that had come to her, was 
to find a way, in the short days or weeks that Edith’s 
plans would give her, to make the darkness less, to rob 
the blind man’s hours of some slight measure of their 
emptiness. Knowing Edith as she did, Margaret un- 
derstood fully the neglect that had followed close 
on the inevitable discovery that John Ford must have 
made of Edith’s absolute inability and even unwilling- 


THE LOST LEGION 


79 


ness to share the things that were essential to an 
earnest life and work. The girl almost let herself 
dream that it was her duty to give up thoughts of her 
work in Paradise and remain here near the man she 
loved, helping Edith, helping him. But the splendid 
spirit of Margaret Gair could not thus deceive itself. 
And so she took up the task of making her whole life 
satisfied with the remembrance of the few days that 
she would spend with John Ford and Edith, and in 
the knowledge that in them she had helped him all that 
she could. 

Two hours later Margaret stood outside the closed 
door of John Ford’s study. A prayer rose to her lips, 
a prayer for help, for guidance, not for herself, but 
that she might be wise enough and brave enough to so 
fill such time as there was given to her with all that 
was good and helpful, that when she had gone (Mar- 
garet realized that she would never return) John 
would remember and would take up the lonelier way 
again with new courage. 

Then she opened the door. 

The blind man was at his desk, but he was facing 
her as though her coming had been expected. Even 
the black goggles could not hide the fine, broad fore- 
head or the clean-cut features. John Ford’s head was 
well set on broad shoulders, denoting at once the man’s 
physical and mental strength, and his control of self 
as well. 

“ Good-morning, Edith,” he said, turning toward 
her. The possibility of his mistaking her for her sister 
had never entered Margaret’s thoughts. A bewilder- 
ing array of possibilities, uncertainties, complexities, 


8o 


THE LOST LEGION 


crowded into her mind. Should she let the blind man 
be deceived? Whither would it lead her or them? 
Could she help more that way? But John Ford’s 
quiet and reassuring words settled the question before 
the girl had time to acquiesce or deny. 

“ We are going to begin all over again, you and I, 
Edith. Just as I was perfectly certain that you would 
come this morning, so both of us are to be entirely sure 
of just what we are to make of this morning and of 
the days that are to come. Now you will be my eyes, 
and I will try to be the mind and heart for both of 
us, as I have never been before. We must begin quite 
at the beginning and get acquainted.” 

It was easy for Margaret after that. 

The decision having been made without her assent, 
almost involuntarily, the girl found that John Ford 
had opened the way simply and naturally to the one 
position that could be maintained by both of them, 
or at least so long as the deception (which was the only 
name she could call it) should last. 

“ I firmly believe,” she said, almost confidently, 
“ that there are two selves in each of us. Nor can we 
ever lose sight of this dual personality. You and I 
are going to make the other selves so they are at least 
nodding acquaintances. We will keep the new things 
we share always and absolutely separate and apart 
from all that has gone before. And the burden lies 
on you not to confuse the old Edith and the new.” 

“ Some day you will perhaps know how fully I 
understand,” said John simply. 

Margaret seated herself. 

“ What shall we read? ” she said abruptly. 


THE LOST LEGION 


81 


But John Ford was silent. 

“ We have been strangers,” he said at last, heedless 
of her question. “ It has always been so with us, 
Edith. We have been strangers from the very first. 
But to-day — yesterday — it is all different now. It is 
the real you and the real I, where formerly it was 
only the shadow of ourselves. Oh, I know you,” he 
added whimsically, “you new Edith! ” 

Margaret looked at him in dismay. She was not cer- 
tain of his meaning. Her heart was at once happy, yet 
confused, uncertain as to its own ground, yet confident 
that the only way was to go on. 

“ The old Edith and the old conditions are gone 
for a while,” she said. “ You must remember only 
that I am here to help. The miracle that has been 
wrought means merely this — that someone is here to 
take James’s place on those stupid walks, and to put 
an end to your afternoons alone. I have come now to 
read to you, if it is your wish. What shall it be? 
One of your medical books? ” 

John Ford bowed his head on his hand. 

“ Forgive me for speaking so — I know you will, 
Edith, but you are not trying to make amends, are you? 
Surely I have never let you think — I mean, I have 

never asked ” 

Margaret interrupted him. 

“ Are you going to fail to catch the spirit of this? ” 
she asked lightly. “It is for you to accept this other 
self that has shown itself to you this afternoon for 
the first time, without a question. While I am with 
you, you are to forget the Edith you have known, just 
as I am to be forgotten when she returns.” 


82 


THE LOST LEGION 


John Ford threw back his head and laughed. Mar- 
garet knew instinctively that it was the first time he 
had laughed since the darkness came upon him. 

“ Then, too,” he said, “ it will be wiser if I do not 
speak of the one Edith to the other, lest both be of- 
fended. But we will not take this nonsense seriously, 
Edith. Perhaps I am getting a bit old and so should 
be made to share in the spirit of this with the proper 
zest. Let us begin now. Can’t we find something to 
read that you would like? ” 

“ This Edith reads only the things that you like,” 
Margaret could not help saying. She wanted to tell 
John that she cared only for those things that inter- 
ested him — that it was she alone who understood them 
all, who shared them with him. But John was speak- 
ing again. 

“ Do you remember the day I asked you to read 
from my medical encyclopedia ? ” 

“ There,” said Margaret severely, “ already you 
have broken the rules. Absolutely no references to the 
old Edith are permitted, at least while this one is 
here.” 

“ I forgot,” said John boyishly. “ Truly I’ll try 
to do better. This old head of mine plays me false 
sometimes when the darkness seems blackest, as it did 
just before you came. But now — now I am in such 
wild spirits I am ready for anything. But I will try 
to remember the rules. It does take my mind from 
myself — all these things with you here this afternoon. 
It may be there are some books on the table — some you 
— we will like.” 

Margaret crossed the room and, glancing over the 


THE LOST LEGION 


83 


great pile of books, selected Miss Mitford’s “ Our Vil- 
lage.” She was not at all surprised to find this old 
friend of hers among John Ford’s books. 

“ Now, sir,” she said, “ you are to sit in your great 
armchair, which is just at your side, and I will be at 
your desk. Then you are not to move until I have 
finished reading.” 

John felt about till his hand touched the arm of 
his chair. Then he seated himself. A pain as sharp 
as the thrust of a knife pierced Margaret’s heart as 
she saw the man struggling to raise his courage until he 
could be brave with her. 

“ Your Majesty, I obey you. Though the heavens 
fall, I will sit here, so long as it is your bidding.” 

“ That, sir, is better. Now that you have displayed 
a properly humble spirit, you may listen or (with 
my permission) fall asleep.” 

“ Sleep is a novelty these days,” commented John 
simply. 

In no other way could John Ford have shown more 
clearly his marvelous self-control than in some insig- 
nificant, chance remark such as this. Margaret saw 
and understood, and her heart rejoiced over it. It was 
but another of the splendid attributes which were com- 
bined in the blind man. 

Then Margaret Gair read to John the quiet story 
of English country life, leading his thoughts to the 
green lanes of the Old World where the sunshine lay 
bright over the hedges and the wild flowers and the 
blossoms of Springtime. 

Half an hour later, Margaret looked up from the 
pages of the book. John Ford was sleeping quietly. 


8 4 


THE LOST LEGION 


The girl continued reading, lest the cessation of her 
voice should rouse him. But, from time to time, Mar- 
garet’s glance let her see that the lines which marked 
John’s face were softened, that at last the tired man 
had found repose. When finally she stopped, John 
stirred. 

“Jove! I must have dozed! It’s the first refresh- 
ing sleep I’ve had since — since my work was taken 
from me. You must forgive me, Edith, for my rude- 
ness. I can never forgive myself — but the sound of 
your voice ” 

“ I will forgive you this time, for your properly 
humble speech before I began to read made me very 
forgiving. But I am about to disappear now. You 
will remember, won’t you, that the old Edith is not 
to be reminded of these things? ” 

“ You need not fear,” replied John Ford. 

How easy it was to be to maintain this farce with 
the blind man! Yet something in his tone made Mar- 
garet wonder if he suspected. But the man’s next 
words banished the thought. 

“ Before you vanish,” said John, “ may I tell you 
that this afternoon has been one of the kind I used 
to dream about? Long, long ago, I thought that you 
and I would spend many such times together through 
the years. Now that to-day has proven that which 
I had long ceased to hope for — now that I, we, know 
that these things can be true, I am thankful for the 
darkness, if it is because of the darkness that all this 
happiness has come to us. Yet perhaps I am selfish 
in this, for it may all be too hard for you.” 

“ But you are not selfish,” said Margaret simply. 


THE LOST LEGION 85 

“ Now I must disappear until to-morrow. You will 
not forget?” 

“ I’ll not forget. But will you be sure to come to- 
morrow? After such an afternoon as this, I cannot 
bear to think of the chance of your vanishing once and 
for all.” 

“ I will come to-morrow,” said Margaret. “ What 
is more, I will come early, in the morning, and we 
will go out somewhere together.” Then, hearing the 
rustle of her gown, John Ford rose and stood motion- 
less until the 'door closed behind her. 

As usual, Edith was late in returning home, and the 
two young women dressed for dinner hastily. 

“ I suppose you had a very stupid afternoon with 
Worthington, my dear.” 

“ Oh, no ! ” replied Margaret indifferently, “ I read 
aloud to him most of the time.” 

“ You will grow tired in a little while, and won’t be 
able to stand it. Even I, who go weeks at a time with- 
out even seeing him, can’t bear being with him for 
more than five minutes. What a blessing it will be 
to me if you can stand it ! Why, I feel already as if I 
had not a care in the world! ” 


CHAPTER VII 


The following morning Margaret took her break- 
fast early and alone. In this it chanced she was but 
following the custom of this silent house, for John 
Ford had always breakfasted alone. Since their mar- 
riage, Edith had been quite content to remain luxuri- 
ously in her own room during the entire morning, nor 
had John’s blindness modified the habit. As soon as 
she had finished, Margaret presented herself at the 
door of John’s study. 

“ Good-morning, sir,” she said. “ I hope you have 
rested well.” 

The blind man rose and turned toward her eagerly. 

“ I have indeed rested well, and was up betimes, 
waiting your coming. It was almost impossible to be- 
lieve that you and I were really going out together. 
My fear was that you would be too tired, for it was 
after one when I heard you come in.” 

“ I thought you said you rested well? ” 

“ So I did. Moreover, the sleep I had in the after- 
noon, while you were reading, rested me wonderfully. 
Yet I cannot forgive myself for having been so rude.” 

“ It was at my express command that you slept,” 
Margaret interposed hastily, as she realized John 
Ford’s feeling of self-denunciation, u so we will not 
speak of it again.” 


86 


THE LOST LEGION 


87 


“ But there is something else I do want to speak 
with you about, Edith. Let’s sit down and talk a 
while. Doubtless you will think it selfish, but I want 
you to make me sure that our afternoon was real — 
that we actually have lived such a blessed time. It 
was the first time since — I could say the very first time 
that I have felt that just you and I together were facing 
the problems that are before us — just you and I alone, 
with no one else in the whole world even knowing 
of them. You will understand — I know you do under- 
stand — what I am trying to say to you. It is not all 
clear and reasonable to me yet, but for some unex- 
plained reason, yesterday afternoon marked the be- 
ginning of a new life to me. Does it seem foolish 
for me to speak in this way to you ? ” 

Then, without giving Margaret an opportunity to 
dissent, John went on : “ I know it doesn’t. It is as 
though this blindness had brought some new sense to 
both of us, giving us in an instant the key which un- 
locks the door that has heretofore barred us from the 
sharing of our inner selves.” 

“ Oh! ” exclaimed Margaret. “ Please don’t! ” 

“ Don’t be alarmed, Edith,” said John gently, “ for 
do you not suppose that this very knowledge of myself 
has given me wisdom and a greater self-control than 
before? When I heard you read, when I found that 
the companionship I have been longing for (oh, how 
strongly you can never guess!) was actually for us, 
then I knew, too, that no act, no word of mine, must 
ever frighten your gentle spirit.” 

Margaret Gair looked at John with shining eyes. 
She could not fathom how much or how little he 


88 


THE LOST LEGION 


guessed, but nevertheless her heart felt safe and glad. 

“ I do know,” she said, “ and it is because I do, and 
because I have absolute faith in you now that you have 
so much to bear, that I have planned this little journey 
for us this morning. You will please be ready to go 
driving at ten.” 

Promptly at the hour appointed, Margaret Gair, 
standing in the hall, saw John Ford slowly descend the 
broad staircase, leaning on James’s arm. But it was 
Margaret herself who led the blind man out to the 
carriage. Not until then had the girl realized fully 
how the slightest chance, such as a word from James, 
would reveal to John Ford the deception she was prac- 
ticing on him. Yet the fear was not for herself, but 
rather that John Ford might know before she had 
had time enough to be of any help to him. Once safely 
in the carriage, however, the fear vanished. 

“ So you are just as fond of driving as you were be- 
fore we were married? ” said John, leaning back with 
a sigh of content that should have told Margaret how 
much enjoyment he was finding. Instead, his remark 
completely disconcerted her. 

“ You know I have always been fond of horses,” 
she managed to reply. For a moment the evasiveness 
of her answer took from Margaret all the happiness 
the morning had promised. If she could only get the 
conversation into the safe and impersonal channels of 
yesterday ! 

“ A little drive will do us both good. Perhaps, too, 
we can find some quiet spot in the park where you can 
take your morning walk more comfortably than in the 
streets.” 


THE LOST LEGION 89 

But John Ford’s mind was not to be so easily 
diverted. 

“ You would be surprised, Edith, if I could show 
you how happy I am in discovering that after all we 
feel just the same about even so little a thing as this. 
Do you remember my having told you of slipping into 
the Park for a ten- or fifteen-minute drive before I 
used to start on my morning calls? It is just possible, 
of course, that I never mentioned it, but the quiet after 
the noise of the streets gave me a chance to think. I 
do not want you to guess how much alone I was or 
how often in those short moments of relaxation I 
needed you, not as you were then, but as you are now, 
to help me to fight off the loneliness. You will not 
think that I am complaining, Edith. It is only that 
somehow to-day I want you to know. You will know 
just what I mean when I tell you that the loneliness 
I felt was not because I was by myself, but rather be- 
cause (and in this there should be no hurt to you, 
Edith) in all the wide world I had found no one who 
would know what I meant if I spoke of these things.” 

“ Now, to-day, you mean,” Margaret’s voice sank 
to almost a whisper in her tenseness, “ it is different 
to-day? ” 

John Ford leaned back easily and comfortably. 
Something in the calm and self-contained manner of the 
movement quieted Margaret and broke the strain that 
she had been under. John’s tone steadied her again 
as she heard him saying: 

“ You see, Edith, it came first yesterday when you 
were reading — something new crept into your voice, 
some wonderful thing that told me as plainly as though 


90 


THE LOST LEGION 


you had spoken words to me, that, after all, in you I 
had found the you that is I. Am I quite unintelligible? 
Shall we speak of something more matter-of-fact? I 
don’t want you to think that I have lost my mind with 
my sight. Either one is bad enough, but both would 
be quite beyond endurance — for those about me, I 
mean.” 

The pause that followed Margaret remembered as 
long as God let her remember anything. Looking 
past the man at her side and out of the window at 
the unattractive street, there swept before the vision 
of the girl’s heart a glimpse of the unknown world 
that lies beyond, that God lets us see but once or twice, 
it may be, in what we call a life-time. Destiny and 
Fate, Time and the passing of the stupendous mystery 
of life from a terrifying unknown into a blessed, as- 
sured reality, only to again give place to fear and 
doubt, gave Margaret such conflicting emotions that 
her whole being seemed literally torn asunder, leaving 
her faith alone as the one thing to which she could 
cling. Then she heard John Ford’s voice speaking 
again, evenly and quietly. 

“Where is your sister Margaret? Am I not to 
see her at all? ” 

It was a question for which Margaret was fully 
prepared. 

“ Why, you see,” she replied, “ there are a whole 
lot of things for Margaret to see and to do. When a 
woman has been banished as she has been in an atro- 
cious Western village, she must at least be permitted 
to indulge herself in the luxury of shopping. Beside, 
you know, Margaret always did despise such things 


THE LOST LEGION 


9i 


as wealth and position. I am not at all certain that 
you will see much of her, for she is very peculiar, and 
has always preferred her own company to being with 
anybody.” 

“ I’m sorry you think so,” said John. Then, “ Have 
we reached the Plaza yet? ” 

“ We are still on the Avenue,” replied Margaret. 
The girl looked long and critically at the man beside 
her and noted for the first time, with intense satisfac- 
tion, John’s returning vigor and the apparent increase 
in his good spirits. At least she was succeeding a 
little bit. 

Entering the Park, they drove on until Margaret had 
the carriage stop at a secluded spot, where she and 
John alighted. Then for a long while they walked up 
and down the unfrequented path. 

“ I can feel the sunshine,” said John, “ and do you 
hear the birds? You are making a new man of me, 
Edith. You cannot guess the difference.” 

Involuntarily the girl’s hand tightened on his arm. 

“Are you sure?” she asked wistfully. “Perhaps 
it is just because Spring is coming and both of us are 
glad to be out of doors again.” 

They stopped before one of the Park benches. A 
squirrel crossed the path in the bright sunlight and, 
climbing up on the bench, sat erect and eager. 

“Oh! ” exclaimed Margaret, “there’s a dear gray 
squirrel just in front of us. He wants something to 
eat!” 

She guided John’s hand till it touched the soft little 
animal. John Ford laughed like a boy as the squirrel’s 
paws seized his hand. 


92 


THE LOST LEGION 


“ We must bring some nuts for the little chap next 
time we come,” said John. 

“ How do you know that I can spare the time to 
come again?” asked Margaret, with assumed indif- 
ference. 

Instantly John Ford grew serious, and the hard, 
weary lines of loneliness came again into his face. 

“ You are right, Edith,” he replied steadily. “ I 
should not have spoken so hastily. It was selfish of me 
to even suggest such a thing.” 

The man’s humility filled Margaret’s heart with 
tenderness. 

“ No,” she replied, “ you are not selfish — you could 
not be. I did not express myself clearly. What I 
meant to say was that you and I, perhaps, could not 
spare the time for this, but that we must use every 
precious moment in finding together the way back to 
your old usefulness. But if it will help, we will even 
come here again, every day, if you want to.” 

On they walked again, leaving the squirrel looking 
reproachfully after them. At the further end of the 
path they stopped. 

“ Edith,” said John suddenly, “ this old world of 
ours has been absolutely revolutionized by you in the 
last day. These things that we are doing are appealing 
to the best side of both of us. It is all because of the 
pure instincts of your nature. I want you to realize 
that I will never attempt to pass the lines that you have 
inferentially prescribed. Do not think that I mean too 
much or too little by this. It is only to reassure you, 
only to make you know that in spite of my unworthiness 
I can be trusted.” The man’s voice dropped lower as 


THE LOST LEGION 


93 


he added seriously, “ I will guard you and the good 
and worthy things we have begun to find since yester- 
day as the most sacred of things.” 

Margaret was startled, terribly startled, at the truth 
in John’s words. Did he, after all, understand as fully 
as he intimated? Had he guessed that she was not 
Edith? Yet his words indicated no misgiving. 

“ So you see,” John went on reassuringly, “ that your 
Majesty’s dominion over me is complete, nor had a 
ruler ever a more willing subject.” 

Margaret drew a long breath. 

“ I knew you would understand,” she said. “ I knew 
you would. I shall be the new Edith for a little while 
each day, and in that little while we will bend every 
effort to accomplishing much that is good, that is worth 
while. We will make Doctor Ford the help to his 
profession he has always been. Indeed, we may do 
more. Who knows?” 

Yet when they were on their homeward way the old 
silence, and the tired, patient expression that his face 
wore the first time Margaret Gair had seen him, settled 
again over John Ford. Margaret looked at him long 
and steadily. As he sat there beside her in the car- 
riage she saw that after all she was but beginning 
to realize what the loss of sight had meant to him. 
Yet without the blindness the opportunity would never 
have come for her to have helped, for them to have 
shared even these little things together. 

“ It is strange, Edith,” said John at last, “ that I 
should find such relief in our having gone as to-day 
somewhere where we could be quite alone. It’s a seri- 
ous fault, I know, but I am exceedingly sensitive about 


94 


THE LOST LEGION 


this blindness. I am ashamed to tell you — but I can’t 
bear the chance of meeting anyone whom I know, — 
perhaps someone who will pity me. The very thought 
of pity from anyone is more than I can bear. Why, 
I have been in constant terror of this when I have been 
walking the street with James, not knowing what in- 
stant I would be stopped and asked the usual, well- 
meant questions.” 

Unconsciously the tone of John’s voice told more of 
the hurt than did his words. Neither the girl nor the 
man was realizing how complete the confidence be- 
tween them had grown. In the short space of a day this 
had become true, the significance of this fact being 
apparently unnoticed by them both. 

“ It is still a struggle to be brave, Edith,” John went 
on. “ That is why your thoughtfulness to-day in 
shielding me as you have will perhaps give me more 
courage in the end, for it affords me a chance to gather 
my strength together for another effort. It makes me 
feel, too, that I am no longer struggling quite alone.” 

“ Nor are you,” said Margaret. “ It is true that you 
are no longer struggling alone. And there is another 
way in which I am to help, too. Are you quite ready 
for a new suggestion? ” 

“If it is something as delightful as this morning 
has been, I am quite ready.” 

“ Then I will tell you at once, lest your suspense be 
too great,” said Margaret, laughing. “ My suggestion 
is simply this : The long evenings afford excellent oppor- 
tunity for practice on your violin. Suppose I get an 
instructor to come one or two nights each week to teach 
you new music? ” 


THE LOST LEGION 95 

John Ford did not attempt to conceal the eagerness 
in his tone. 

“ Do you think it can be arranged?” he exclaimed. 
“ But the expense ! For the moment I had forgotten. 
There’s so much else that the money must be needed 
for. But it is a happy thought for me, and a kind one 
for you to suggest. But we must put it away together 
with much else that we may want to do. Once all of 
these things would have been possible, but now they are 
not even to be thought of. And this brings me to 
something, Edith, that I have been too depressed, too 
much of a coward, to even ask about. Is there still 
money enough? I have wanted to ask, but money mat- 
ters have always distressed you. These violin lessons 
you suggest, — would they not deprive you of something 
you need for yourself? You see how utterly in the 
dark, how entirely powerless I am. Yet to have the 
lessons would make me glad — perhaps you are sug- 
gesting it in self-defense,” lightly. “ It may well be 
that anything is a relief from the scraping which is 
all my violin playing amounts to now.” 

“ Your music never disturbs anyone,” replied Mar- 
garet. “ The old pieces and the simple ones are those 
I love best of all. It is our own hearts that make music 
beautiful. But you must put your mind at rest about 
the money. For a while, at least, everything will go 
smoothly. Then one of these fine days we will slip 
away from the noise and bustle of the city to some 
quiet little place that we can afford. In the summer 
time we will sit on the porch (I pretend it is a tiny 
little one with vines at the end) and I will sew 
and talk to you, and sometimes read, and then, when 


96 THE LOST LEGION 

it is winter, there’ll be long, snug evenings by the 
fire.” 

Margaret’s voice faltered. The fancy of her heart 
had drawn this little picture that could never be, yet 
even while it did so, the unspeakable pain to her and 
to this man made her stop. Well she knew Edith’s in- 
terest in such a home, well she knew what Edith might 
have made such a home mean to John Ford, and only 
too well did she know what these things were to herself. 

“ But there,” she went on hastily, “ we were speak- 
ing of your music.” 

But the man interrupted her. 

“ Never before have you said anything like that, 
Edith. Through all the years I have been waiting, lis- 
tening for the very words you have used to-night. Can 
you guess how glad it makes me? Such thoughts as 
these are dearer to me even than my old violin. You 
remember, you used to speak rather lightly of it — but 
you were quite right — I never could play well.” 

“ Now you are referring to the old Edith, which is 
against the rules, you know. You must not forget 
again, else I’ll disappear.” 

When at last the carriage reached the house, and the 
two made their way up the front steps, Margaret noted 
that John Ford bore himself more confidently. His 
voice, too, was almost cheerful when they parted. 

Dinner alone with Edith Ford was Margaret’s great- 
est trial. 

“ I asked Worthington from the very first to spare 
me the pain of seeing him at meal time,” said Edith 
that night. “You cannot imagine the strain to my 


THE LOST LEGION 


97 


nerves to eat dinner with that man. Why, the very 
watching his efforts made me feel as though I must 
scream. You can imagine one of my high-strung tem- 
perament and refinement of sensibilities being asked to 
go through such a trial three times a day. Why, James 
has to stand beside him and feed him. I knew per- 
fectly I could not stand it without shattering my nerves. 
Anyway, it was simply absurd for him to try to main- 
tain his place in the household. I told him so.” 

Margaret’s eyes blazed indignantly. Edith’s indiffer- 
ence hurt her, yet at the same time it made her glad, 
for she knew that the neglect and unkindness made it 
easier for John Ford to bear the burden of Edith’s 
failure to understand him and to share his life. 

“ Do you think,” she asked, after a pause, “ that it 
would help your husband if someone gave him violin 
lessons once or twice each week, in the evenings? ” 

“ I might have anticipated just such a suggestion 
from you, Margaret,” Edith replied pettishly. “ I 
never have heard of anyone so bent as you have al- 
ways been upon spending their money on someone else. 
Why don’t you suggest something that would be of help 
to me? You know perfectly that I haven’t money 
enough for the things I need for myself, without spend- 
ing any for such unnecessary things as music lessons for 
Worthington.” 

“ It would be very inexpensive,” interposed Mar- 
garet mildly. 

“ I don’t care how inexpensive it is. It must neces- 
sarily cost something.” 

“ No doubt some musician who is in need could be 
found readily enough,” Margaret went on, without 


98 


THE LOST LEGION 


heeding Edith’s remark. “ In the old days in Wash- 
ington Square my music master knew many such — in- 
deed, I met some of them. But, Edith, if you feel that 
you cannot afford anything for this purpose, if you need 
the money for the things you are doing, I will be glad 
to bear the expense.” 

“ Well, have your own way about it, if you want to. 
No doubt you’ve plenty of money, Margaret, and you 
will never need it yourself, for I am perfectly certain 
you will never have a home of your own. You will 
be an old maid all your days for the sake of some im- 
possible ideal or imaginary thing to which you want to 
cling. Make any plans you want to about Worthing- 
ton’s music — I wash my hands of it.” 

“ But don’t you think your husband would be hap- 
pier if he thought you had arranged it?” said Mar- 
garet insistently. “ Suppose you tell him about it as 
though you were planning it.” 

“ Oh, very well, I’ll do it if I don’t forget, though 
I don’t know when I’ll see Worthington. But do let 
us talk of something else. You will never guess whom 
I met this afternoon,” 

So at last the sisters’ conversation turned to less es- 
sential things. 

It chanced, however, a little later, as Edith and Mar- 
garet passed from the dining-room, that John Ford, 
leaning on James’s arm, entered the hall. He stopped 
at the sound of the rustle of the women’s gowns. Mar- 
garet, standing aside, looked from her sister back again 
to the strong figure of the blind man, and the thought 
came to her rather to marvel at the blindness that was 
Edith’s, the blindness of spirit that always had and 


THE LOST LEGION 


99 

always would make these two strangers to each other. 
It was Edith who spoke. 

“ I have been talking with Margaret about you, 
Worthington,” she said coldly. “ You are to have a 
music teacher, just as though you were a small child. 
It will at least give me the relief of hearing you play 
something new.” 

Margaret Gair moved a step or two away as her 
sister spoke. The pain Edith’s words brought to her 
made her know how they must hurt John Ford, too. 
But the girl said nothing. 

“ Thank you for your thoughtfulness,” replied John 
steadily. “ I try to appreciate all you are doing for 
me.” 

Then he turned away, and James guided him to the 
stairs. Margaret watched his figure till he disappeared. 
Then she followed her sister into the music room. 
Edith had seated herself at the piano and her fingers 
were running over the keys indifferently. 

“ Worthington gets on my nerves so. I wish you 
would not speak to me about him so often, Margaret. 
I am dreadfully upset by all the talk about those stupid 
music lessons.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


The next morning the blind man heard the rain beat- 
ing against the pane. He paced up and down restlessly, 
pausing now and then as though to look out of his 
study window at the stormy sky. 

James stood at a respectful distance, watching his 
master with ill-concealed anxiety. 

“ See if there’s any sign of clearing, James,” com- 
manded John Ford. 

James pulled aside the shade and peered out at the 
rain, driven hither and thither by the east wind. 

“ It looks bad, sir,” he said at last. 

“ Was the carriage ordered at ten? ” asked John. 

“ Yes, sir, provided the day was clear.” 

The blind man took his watch from his pocket help- 
lessly. 

“ What time is it now, James? ” 

“ It lacks half an hour of ten, sir.” 

John Ford resumed tramping up and down his study. 

“ James,” he said sharply, “ you can’t see from this 
window. Go out on the steps and look at the sky 
carefully. I am confident it will clear.” 

The blind man waited impatiently for the sound of 
James’s returning steps. 

“ Well? ” he demanded sharply. “ Well? ” 

“ It’s raining steadily, sir, and the sky is dark in every 
direction.” 


THE LOST LEGION 


IOI 


John Ford sank wearily into his chair. 

“ You may go, James,” he said at last. 

When he knew he was alone, the blind man covered 
his face with his hands. Now and then the broad shoul- 
ders heaved, but no sound came from the tightly closed 
lips. Suddenly he raised his head, listening. The 
sound of a light step had reached the keen ears. Then 
the man sat erect, his face turned eagerly toward the 
door, waiting. 

Margaret Gair paused at the threshold. Oh, that 
the blind eyes might have seen her then ! 

“Edith!” he exclaimed, rising. “Edith!” 

“ The new Edith,” replied Margaret gently, “ come 
to make this dark day brighter for her most lowly sub- 
ject, by helping him to spend this morning in useful 
research.” 

The girl noted the expression of relief which swept 
across John Ford’s face. 

“ Do you mean it? ” he exclaimed. “ Do you really 
mean it? One gets so selfish, sitting here. I have 
been thinking only that there would be no escape 
for me from an endless morning alone, that I would 
have to spend the time counting the moments until 
at last the afternoon would bring you to me. I am 
quite ashamed, but I tell you of this that you may 
know what it means to me for you to have come 
now.” 

Margaret interrupted him nervously. 

“ I have something that will help to dispel the dark- 
ness, I am sure,” she said. “ I have brought a letter 
from one of sister Margaret’s cowboy friends. Would 
it not amuse you to hear it? ” 


102 


THE LOST LEGION 


John Ford took his accustomed place at his desk and 
turned toward Margaret. 

“ Indeed I do want to hear it, Edith. I have been 
looking for an opportunity to speak with your sister. 
I want to talk to her about herself. I want to get 
acquainted with her. I have seen her only twice since 
she came. In fact I have hardly spoken to her. Where 
does she keep herself? She has been here three days 
now, hasn’t she? ” 

“ Oh, you see,” replied Margaret, trying to speak 
indifferently, “ she has been going out a good deal. You 
know these young, unmarried creatures receive so much 
attention, especially when they have about them a halo 
of romance, such as Margaret’s Western life has given 
her.” 

“ Do you know, I can’t imagine a sister of yours 
being a tomboy and roughing it. Doubtless I should 
admire it, yet it is so different from the way you are, 
Edith.” 

“ Now you are speaking of the old Edith,” said Mar- 
garet. “ You must not judge Margaret by the old 
Edith.” 

“ Indeed, I do not,” replied John quickly. “ Do you 
know, Edith, I am rather glad your sister keeps away, 
for I want nothing to interfere with our talks, and 
these opportunities that are beginning to come to keep 
me in touch with my profession — and who knows, who 
knows? We doctors are all fallible. Perhaps after 
all we will fool them, you and I, and we will find in 
these afternoons together, it may be, a way to make 
these old blind eyes of mine do their work again. And 
do you know that though only once, only yesterday, 


THE LOST LEGION 


103 


have you ever tried to help me in this way, yet I 
thought that you were more eager than I that we might 
find the way.” 

Margaret was silent. 

‘‘Would you like to hear the letter?” she asked 
abruptly. 

John Ford leaned back in his chair. 

“ Indeed I should — but is it quite fair to Mar- 
garet to read her letter, even if she did consent? 
I have wanted to talk to you about Margaret. 
Shan’t we do it before we read her letter? It seems 
as if I at least should be better acquainted with 
her.” 

Margaret shook her head. 

“ No,” she said, “ probably you would not under- 
stand Margaret at all. If you had known her for 
years — seen her every day — you would perhaps be no 
better acquainted with her than you are now. The peo- 
ple about her, even her own family, do not know her. 
No one shares her fancies, no one seems to come in 
contact with her self. Even I, who should know her 
best of all, can scarcely follow all the queer notions 
that make her live a life quite apart from the rest 
of us.” 

“ You only make me the more eager,” said John. 
“ If we cannot have your sister with us now, perhaps 
the letter will be something. That is, if you think it 
is right.” 

“ Why, of course it is right,” replied Margaret, 
“ although the letter, because of its cowboy origin, is 
doubtless horribly uncivilized. Instead of telling us 
about Margaret, there’s no knowing what we may find 


104 


THE LOST LEGION 


in it. I am really quite curious about it myself. Just 
hear how it begins. 

“ Miss M. Gair, 

“ 22 West 39th Street, 

“ New York City, U. S. A. 

“ Dear Miss Margaret: 

“ This here is writ by the undersigned for himself 
and two fellow-citizens of Paradise who is ashamed of 
ther spellin and writin, to wit, namely, Neptune Lynch 
and Ike Mossman. Weve been meetin regular each 
night down to Nep Lynches store and have follered 
your trip across the continent by givin perticerler at- 
tenshun to sech newspapers as come regular to Nep 
Lynch. We beleve you have reached the east safe and 
are hopin sech is the case. 

“ Each night at our meetings we follers a regular 
order of bisness as follers: Each takes turns tellin all 
hes dun, good or bad, sence the meetin the night befor. 
Then the other two say wether they think as how youd 
approve of what the fellers dun or aint dun as the case 
may be. If they deside its all right, well and good. If 
not the feller as dun it has got to brase up the next day. 
All of us is trying to live jest as you would want us 
to if you was here to see Mis Margaret. We gets a 
little mixed as to jest how youd look at some things, 
but the most trubble we have is with Ike whos always 
claimin thet what hes dun aint worthy of your approval. 
Lots of times when hes dun jest what youd want him 
to me and Nep cant make him see it. 

“ Its been mighty lonely in Paradise. Even the chil- 
dern is more quiet. Some of ems been sick — jest plain 


THE LOST LEGION 


105 


cases of lonesomeness. Sorry to tell you about it but 
pleas don’t worry. Mis Craft sends her respecks as 
likewise does the undersigned Neptune Lynch and Ike 
Mossman. 

“ Respeckfully yours 

“ Bud Caven. 

“ P.S. Im wantin you even moren I thought I would. 
You aint fergot your promise to come back, have you? 
We all need you to keep us strait me most of all.” 

Margaret turned toward John Ford, hoping to see 
that he had been amused by Bud’s blunt letter, but in- 
stead the blind man sat silent, with his head bowed. 
And the silence lengthened. There was no sound save 
the driving rain against the window. Margaret moved 
uneasily. It was only then that John Ford roused 
himself. 

“ She would be like that,” he said. “ I have always 
known it.” 

“ Like what? ” asked Margaret. The girl was filled 
with apprehension. 

“I did not express myself very clearly, did I?” 
replied John. “ What I mean is that I know just the 
sympathy and understanding of a woman such as your 
sister Margaret has shown herself to be by that letter. 
She is gentle and true and strong, to make a rough 
man write to her as that one has done. Like every 
pure woman, she is an infinite power for good. The 
letter said that they were trying to live out there in 
Paradise just as they knew she would want them to. 
It is a responsibility your sister has, and a great one, 
but it is good, it is splendid. Has your sister ever 


106 THE LOST LEGION 

told you about this chap or the other two with des- 
perado names that the letter mentions? ” 

“Neptune Lynch?” asked Margaret too readily. 

“ I think that was the name.” 

“ Margaret did speak of him once,” Margaret went 
on, “ and of the man who wrote the letter, as well. 
It seems Neptune Lynch keeps the village store out 
there. He must be quite a character. I think she said 
he fought in the Confederate Army in the Civil War. 
What queer, simple-minded men they must be ! Why, 
once she had them all out in the middle of the night 
in a great open place, expounding to them the glories 
of the firmament. Can’t you see those great, awkward 
men staring open-mouthed at the sky — stupid, clumsy 
men without refinement, without almost everything?” 

Margaret’s lips found it hard to frame the words 
as she knew Edith would. In spite of their faults, these 
were the very men whose whole natures she knew and 
respected and loved, and they depended upon her. None 
knew better than she the underlying goodness that could 
not be wholly hidden by the roughness of their lives. 

“ I can envy those men, Edith,” said John Ford, at 
last. “ Over and over again, in the midst of the hurry 
and effort our lives here bring upon us, I have searched 
in vain for just the solitude that your sister has found, 
far off there in the mountains. I don’t mean the soli- 
tude of merely getting away from things and people, 
but the solitude that is a complete and satisfying ac- 
quaintanceship with one’s self. I know the very com- 
fort that your sister finds in the silence and in the true 
knowledge of things that comes to her. You remember 
Maeterlinck says that we talk to fill up the blanks of 


THE LOST LEGION io; 

life, and that silence alone can transmit real and inmost 
thoughts.” 

“ Perhaps you’re right,” replied Margaret, “ but 
isn’t she running the danger of becoming less broad, 
less evenly balanced, less wise? Don’t women, and 
men, too, find a broader life here — here in a great city 
where there seems to be opportunity for all the strength 
one’s nature possesses? Why, on every side I have been 
seeing those who are hungry for human sympathy, those 
who are absolutely dying because they can find none 
who will take the time even to show them that they 
care. We read how of old God reached down through 
some miracle and touched those who believed with the 
infinite blessing of His love. And He does so now, 
but instead of the miracle He uses men and women. 
How much more splendid it all is, and how much more 
real unselfishness seems when we can find it in an- 
other man or another woman ! ” 

John Ford shook his head. 

“ A woman such as your sister, Edith, would find use- 
fulness wherever she might be. To such a woman the 
thousand little thoughtfulnesses that make life easier 
for others would be found in whatever place she might 
live. A great city or one of the empty places of the 
world alike would be lonely for her — lonely beyond 
endurance. To such a one, even the whole of life might 
be spent before she would find the one, the other self, 
the one who in all the world could understand.” 

Margaret’s thoughts were in that far-off place where 
her true self had always dwelt. Her heart rose to meet 
John Ford’s as he spoke. Then — then she only said : 

“ You are right.” 


CHAPTER IX 


It was Spring. Even the uncompromising streets 
could not banish the magic of it that was in the air. 
The mystery of the Springtime showed itself in the very 
sunshine, in the hordes of playing children. In the 
Park the swelling, budding branches and the tender 
green of the lawns brought to the great city the memory 
of other Springtimes long gone, when the peace and 
beauty of nature dwelt everywhere in that which is now 
the City of Unrest. 

Margaret Gair stood by her open window and looked 
down into the street. The soft air brought to her the 
longing for freedom — the old longing that had been 
hers since childhood, and which the passing years had 
but made the stronger. The mellow sunshine, the lan- 
guid air, were telling her of Paradise and of her moun- 
tains, and that Spring had come there, too. 

All the vast spaces, the great, empty places of the 
world, were calling to her spirit just as always, only 
> now the girl knew that they must be calling to his 
spirit, too. 

For a long while she stood at the window with- 
out moving. When at last she looked at her watch, 
it was nearly ten o’clock. Margaret gave a little cry 
of delight and fairly ran across the room to get her 
hat and coat. For a moment, everything was blotted 

108 


THE LOST LEGION 109 

out, forgotten, in the thought of the happiness the day 
was to hold. 

The great river, in finding its way to the sea, passes 
at last beneath the straight cliffs which mark its western 
bank. Opposite are round hills, crowned even now with 
forests that were young in the days when this country 
of ours was young, too. Though the city has begun to 
encroach on these secluded hills, the view to the north 
still lies unbroken. The Spring morning that found 
Margaret Gair by her window had dawned as clear and 
beautiful as any day that had come to those hills since 
the beginning of the world. The waters of the Hud- 
son and the arch of the sky to the north were azure 
blue, deepening now into richer color, as the new day 
grew older. 

It was thus when the carriage stopped at a path lead- 
ing up one of the hillsides, and Margaret Gair, alight- 
ing, led John Ford to the higher ground beneath the 
bare trees. Following them came James, bearing a 
great hamper, his dignity shattered by the steep ascent. 
Near the summit Margaret paused under a great tree 
that in June cast its broad shadow across the face of 
the hillside. But now the sunlight lay warm and invit- 
ing all about. 

“ You may go, James,” said Margaret, when the 
man had placed the hamper on the ground. “ Be here 
promptly at three.” 

“ Yes, ma’am,” was James’s respectful reply, con- 
cealing his surprise, as always, behind an inscrutable 
mask. 

Margaret was glad when at last the carriage disap- 
peared. She could never feel comfortable when James 


IO 


THE LOST LEGION 


was about, lest in some way he should betray her to 
John. Yet it was John Ford himself who breathed a 
deep sigh of contentment and happiness when he re- 
alized that at last they were alone together. 

“Are you trying to kidnap me, Edith?” he asked. 
“ I should be glad if you were. To be with you, out 
here in the pure air and sunshine, leaves me nothing to 
wish for. But I am so selfish about it, Edith. I want 
to be here just alone with you. I want to forget for 
a little while the need of trying to be brave. You and 
you alone can understand what this means to me, and 
I want only you alone to understand. It is not that 
I am afraid of the burden, but in these few weeks I 
have found the need of you, the need of letting you see 
that I, at least, am not blind to all that you have been 
doing for me, ever since the day you first pretended to 
be a new Edith. Don’t think I am finding fault with 
that which has gone before. Rather is it that a new 
day seems to have dawned, — one in which we share 
the very things that until now have been beyond our 
grasp. I was conscious of them, as indeed you may 
have been too, but you know as well as I do that there 
was no such thing as our finding them together — that 
we were in truth practically strangers to each other. 
But now all that is gone. Whether it needed this 
blindness to make the change or not, I do not know. 
Neither do I know whether it is you who have changed, 
or I. Perhaps both of us have somewhat. Sometimes 
I am conscious that with you at least an undefinable 
change has taken place — no, not a change after all. 
It is more as if I had found in you my other self — 
my better self. Perhaps before, in my work and hurry, 


THE LOST LEGION 


iii 


you and I had no time to get acquainted, for now the 
new Edith I find you to be has revived in me most 
precious thoughts and hopes that had slept in my heart 
since the days of young manhood, waiting through these 
long years for this — for you to come at last, waiting 
for you to stir them into life.” 

Margaret turned away. Her eyes did not see. She 
could no longer hear his words, for her heart cried 
out in answer as John Ford showed to her the seeking 
of his soul in the impenetrable darkness that her sister 
had left about him. 

When at last the man spoke again, his tone was once 
more in lighter vein. 

“ To-day you are indeed my eyes, are you not? Tell 
me, Edith, from where we are sitting can you see 
straight up the Hudson for miles and miles? I want 
you to tell me about it. I want to see it as you see it.” 

A tinge of the hopelessness crept back into John 
Ford’s tone. 

“ Not until we have had luncheon,” replied Mar- 
garet lightly. “ After that we will share the beauty 
of the scene together.” 

She quickly spread a great shawl on the grass. 

“ Now we will pretend,” she said, “ that you are 
the guest of honor. You are to seat yourself here;” 
and she led John to the place she had prepared for 
him. “ We are to have a picnic with none of the incon- 
veniences. I hope you are hungry, for James has pro- 
vided us with luncheon enough for a regiment.” 

“ I am hungry,” replied John heartily. Then, in a 
different tone : “ Summer is coming, Edith. Don’t you 
hear the birds? And what is that other sound? Are 


1 12 THE LOST LEGION 

we near enough to the river to hear the water 
flowing? ” 

Margaret turned from the broad expanse of sky and 
river to the blind man beside her. 

“ It is the sound of the river on the shore,” she 
said simply. 

John Ford passed his hands over his eyes as though 
to brush away the night that enveloped them. 

“ Often I have come somewhere near this very spot, 
I imagine, just for a glimpse of the river and the sky. 
On clear days it is the most beautiful view I have ever 
seen. Don’t you remember I have spoken to you of it 
once or twice, long ago, Edith?” 

“ I can’t say that I remember,” replied Margaret 
uneasily. 

John Ford shook his head. 

“ You never used to remember, but I’ve noticed a 
change about that. In the last few weeks, Edith, you 
have remembered everything I have said. More than 
this, you have given the true interpretation to every- 
thing so that there has been no possibility of our mis- 
understanding. Somehow, both of us seem to me to 
want to remember every word that either of us has 
spoken. Why does this new Edith that has come 
to comfort me want to remember the very things that 
the old Edith seemed eager to forget? ” 

There was a long pause. Margaret was surprised 
to find herself unembarrassed by John’s question, yet 
the girl had no answer, and none seemed needed. At 
least, he appeared to expect none, for he went on : 

“ I know the reason. You and I are now in com- 
plete sympathy and accord, whereas before — before 


THE LOST LEGION 


1 13 

the new Edith came — everything was conspiring to 
take us further and further apart. Why we should so 
misunderstand each other for so many years must have 
been our own fault, yet if it were, how was it that 
in an instant all that has given us pain since we have 
been married was swept away by your mere statement 
that you were a new Edith, come to be to me whatever 
I had not found the old Edith to have been? Yet how 
unreasonable all that is ! ” 

Margaret laughed unsteadily. 

“ Why should we bother ourselves with such abstruse 
questions, when we have something so much more sub- 
stantial to discuss? I mean, of course, the luncheon 
James has left here in the hamper for us. After we 
have finished that, I have something to read to you.” 

“ You are quite too good to me,” said John in a 
low voice. Then, light-heartedly : “ This is a picnic ! 
And the very jolliest there has ever been. Where is 
my napkin? ” 

For the next quarter of an hour neither of them 
found much time for conversation. Margaret watched 
John eat with intense satisfaction, not only because of 
the evident relish with which he enjoyed his food, but 
because, as he sat there with the sunshine falling warm 
and bright upon him, she seemed to see, with no doubt 
as to its coming, the day when he, fully restored, would 
go forth again to his work in the world — and Mar- 
garet was glad for his sake. It seemed to her that she 
could see no other ending, and with high courage she 
would not let herself believe that the very vigor of his 
manhood and the splendid achievement of his life were 
to be swallowed up and lost in endless days of darkness. 


THE LOST LEGION 


1 14 

At last the meal ended. Margaret Gair leaned back 
with her hands buried deep in the grass at the edge 
of the shawl. 

“ How I love to feel the grass,” she said, touching 
it caressingly. “ And here are some clover leaves. I 
wonder if I could find a four-leaf one?” 

John smiled. 

“ I am afraid I cannot help you find one,” he said. 
“ Will not the three-leaf variety do? There are plenty 
of them, and moreover, you remember, the botanists 
tell us that in every clover there is the germ of the 
fourth leaf. Do you recall that little song about the 
four-leaf clover, Edith? The words are something 
like this : 


•* ‘ I know a place where the sun is like gold. 

And the cherry -blooms burst with snow. 

And down underneath is the cosiest nook. 

Where the four -leaf clovers grow. 

One leaf is for faith, and one is for hope. 

And one is for love, you know. 

And God put the other one in for luck — 

If you search, you will find where they grow. 

But you must have faith and you must have hope. 

You must love and grow strong, and so. 

If you work, if you wait, you will find the place 
Where the four-leaf clovers grow. , * y 

“ I do recall the words,” replied Margaret, “ and 
I love them, love them more than you can guess. So 
often I feel the meaning of things, yet some fault 
within me, it must be, makes it impossible for me 
to tell anyone anything about it.” 


THE LOST LEGION 


115 

“ It is always so with the best things our hearts 
find,” said John, “ and often I am glad that this thing 
is true. God has not wanted us to find the worthiest 
things so easy of expression that they become soiled 
with too frequent use. It is only now and then, like 
a flash of light, that lasting good finds its way to the 
world in words. Even truth is often for a time lost 
sight of, but each of us has, somewhere in the world, 
one to whom we can give each thought, just as it 
comes, in the blessed assurance that no misunder- 
standing will result from so doing.” 

“ Do you believe that?” whispered Margaret. 

“ I know it,” replied John quietly, “ and in knowing 
it lie the beginning and end of all things, for me 
and for everyone else besides. I am as sure of this 
to-day as I was long ago when the consciousness of it 
first came to me. I have been waiting all of the time.” 

‘‘You have been waiting, too?” asked Margaret 
unguardedly. 

“ You could not doubt that, could you, Edith? You 
must know as fully as I do just the meaning of my 
words. Long ago, perhaps I was a boy then, — per- 
haps I am only a boy now, — often there came in the 
sunshine, in the fresh breeze, in the very merriment 
of young companions, this unutterable sense of lone- 
liness, overpowering, unbearable, making me turn 
away, sick at heart, yet glad that in my eyes God had 
let the sight of beautiful things mean what it did. 
What it meant has shaped itself more and more defi- 
nitely, more and more surely. There is no guess- 
work about this now, Edith, and none can know it 
better than you. The slightest falseness entering in 


THE LOST LEGION 


1 16 

you would feel — it would undermine all the rest, mak- 
ing that which should have been beautiful hideous to 
us both, destroying the comfort of each moment.” 

Margaret’s silence seemed to answer the blind man. 
He waited quietly, not as though for her to speak, 
but rather as if she had in truth replied to his unasked 
question. Then John went on: 

“ Often the knowledge of these things has come to 
me at such odd times, Edith. Yet always when I 
needed it most. So to-day we have come here to- 
gether, just after such a night as last night, when 
new and unspeakably hideous thoughts had come to 
make the darkness worse. But all those things are 
gone now,” said John, trying to laugh. “ Let us not 
spoil our day with such somber thoughts.” 

But Margaret was forgetful of all save the blind 
man’s need. 

“ Don’t say that,” she begged. “ Let us try to find 
some way of keeping such times from you. Oh, what 
can I do to help? ” 

“ I am quite ashamed,” said John. “ I did not 
mean to speak as I have. Don’t you see that to-day 
our being together here in the sunshine has worked 
the miracle? Because we are able to talk of these 
things bravely, truthfully, makes all the rest easier. 
Even though I am as blind as before, it will be quite 
a different man whom you will take home with you 
to-night, — a better man because of your help. Let 
us thank God for it, Edith.” 

But the girl could not reply. 

So it was that to Margaret the afternoon, as she 
remembered it, always ended just there, with those 


THE LOST LEGION n 7 

words of John’s. There was no recollection of James’s 
coming then with the carriage for them, nor of the 
ride home. Nor was the day far distant when the girl 
was to be glad that she had learned the need of hold- 
ing fast to the things that were to become the 
memories. 


CHAPTER X 


Margaret Gair climbed the five long flights of 
stairs. The hideous red carpet and the walls with 
their flaring green and gold paper made the way seem 
even longer than it was. At last she paused breathless 
at the door of the topmost apartment. A gentle,’ gray- 
haired woman answered her knock. 

“ Is this Mrs. Caven? ” 

“ Yes,” was the reply, “ won’t you come in and rest 
yourself? Even young folks find those stairs very 
long.” 

Mrs. Caven led her visitor through the narrow hall 
into the sitting-room. Everywhere was the sense of 
home and of comfort, and of the home love for all 
that is good and worthy. The morning sunshine 
brightened the little room and lay in a broad band 
across the floor. There were plants at the windows 
and scrupulous neatness everywhere. Over the roofs 
of the houses Margaret caught a glimpse of the Hud- 
son. An old clock ticked on the mantel, giving to the 
quiet of the room an added sense of security and of 
peace that rested the girl. 

At Mrs. Caven’s invitation Margaret seated herself 
in a low rocker beside the older woman. Neither 
thought it strange that Mrs. Caven had asked no ques- 
tions as to the occasion of her visitor’s coming, nor had 
Margaret found it necessary to explain. The two sat 


THE LOST LEGION 


119 

facing each other while the older woman’s eyes, quiet 
eyes, sought Margaret’s face and lingered there, noting 
the youth and the freshness. Yet the glance was moth- 
erly and loving, sweeping away in an instant any sense 
of strangeness between them. 

“ I am Margaret Gair,” said Margaret simply. 

“ Margaret Gair,” repeated Mrs. Caven, “ Mar- 
garet Gair? Seems as if I had heard the name before. 
Do you live near here, my dear? ” 

Margaret was finding her task just a little hard at 
the beginning. She did not want to surprise this 
gentle mother with a too sudden telling of news of 
the boy who had gone away so long ago. But Mrs. 
Caven’s quiet, serene face reassured her. 

“ No,” replied Margaret, “ I am from the West, 
though I was born here in New York. I have been 
living for a long while over on the western side of the 
Rocky Mountains. Have you ever been there, Mrs. 
Caven? ” 

Mrs. Caven took a pair of spectacles from the table 
beside her and began to polish their lenses with a 
handkerchief, while she rocked slowly back and forth 
in the old rocker that Margaret guessed rightly was 
the very chair in which the mother in the long-gone 
days had sat and rocked the babies to sleep. 

“ No, my dear,” said Mrs. Caven, at last, “ I’ve 
never been West, but I’ve got a boy who is there. At 
least, I think he’s there. He’s a good boy, and some 
day he’s coming home to me.” 

Margaret turned away lest she should see the lips 
tremble and the old eyes grow dim at the thought of 
the boy. Margaret’s own eyes grew dim, too, for 


£20 


THE LOST LEGION 


there before her she saw Bud’s manly figure and the 
handsome face that could be tender as well — a face not 
unlike that of the mother before her. 

“ It was of him,” said Margaret gently, “ that I 
wanted to speak. I know him well. For six years 
we have lived in the same town.” 

Mrs. Caven leaned forward and touched Margaret’s 
hand timidly, uncertainly; then she grew tense with 
eagerness. 

“You know my Bud?” she asked. “You have 
seen him? ” 

Her very tone told of the years of yearning and the 
hunger of the mother heart for the boy who had so 
long been lost. 

“ Yes,” repeated Margaret softly, “ for six years I 
have seen Bud every day. And he asked me to find 
you while I was in New York.” 

Mrs. Caven wiped away her tears furtively, smiling 
at Margaret even while she wept. 

“ You must excuse an old woman, my dear,” she 
said, “ but when you are a mother, and are as old as 
I am, you will know how I feel at hearing news of my 
boy who has been so long lost to me. May God bless 
your sweet face and your pretty eyes for telling me 
of my own boy.” 

Then there was silence while the clock ticked away 
with added cheerfulness and the sun shone more 
brightly than before, while contentment stole into the 
hearts of the two women. 

“ You must tell me all about him,” said Mrs. Caven 
at last. “ I want to hear it all — how he looks, how 
he has fared. But there, in my selfishness I am for- 


THE LOST LEGION 


121 


getting all about you, my dear. You must lay aside 
your coat and hat and let me get you something to 
eat.” 

Before Margaret could protest, the older woman 
had bustled away with an added apology for her re- 
missness. Margaret rose, and laying aside her coat 
and hat, took from her pocketbook a number of photo- 
graphs she had taken in Paradise. All of them showed 
Bud Caven either alone or with the other men. How 
far away and how different it all seemed! The girl 
turned to the window and looked long and steadily 
at the distant river. She was still standing there when 
Bud’s mother returned, bearing a small tray. 

“ May I call you Margaret?” she asked timidly. 
“ Perhaps I am a little upset by all this news, but some- 
how you don’t seem strange to me, but as though I 
had known you years and years.” 

“ Of course you are to call me Margaret,” replied 
the girl. 

u Now you are not to say a word till you have had 
some tea and eaten a bit. Have you come far to- 
day? ” asked Mrs. Caven solicitously. 

Margaret did as she was bidden. When at last 
the tray was set aside, Mrs. Caven seated herself once 
more in the old rocker, and together they looked over 
the pictures of Bud. 

“ Here he is on his horse,” said Margaret brightly. 
And at the sight the two were taken across the miles 
to the sunshine in the street of Paradise, to the figure 
of the galloping horseman. 

But the one Mrs. Caven liked best of all showed Bud 
with an Indian child on his shoulder, his face turned up 


122 


THE LOST LEGION 


to meet the glance of the dark eyes that looked down 
at him. They were evidently enjoying themselves 
heartily. 

“ That’s Bud,” said Mrs. Caven, “ that’s my boy. 
He was always gentle-like and kind with his little 
sister. Does he ever speak of her? ” 

Margaret wanted to spare her. 

“ He often does of you,” she replied. u He said he 
knew you and I would get on well together. He v 
wanted me to be the one who brought you word of 
him.” 

“ The time has been very long. Bud hasn’t realized 
how I grieved over him, wondering whether he was 
dead or alive all these years. If he’d stopped to think, 
he’d have sent his old mother some word. You’ll for- 
give a question, my dear? But my boy is so precious 
to me, I must know. Are you Bud’s sweetheart? ” 

Margaret looked away. There came the recollec- 
tion of Bud’s boyish face and his frank, smiling eyes. 
Then she turned and looked straight into the motherly 
face before her. 

“ No, I am not Bud’s sweetheart, but I have tried 
to be mother and sister to him, tried to keep his belief 
in the thought that you loved him still, and I have 
tried to say to him some of the things you might have 
said, had you been there in my place.” 

Mrs. Caven leaned forward and smoothed the girl’s 
brown hair tenderly. Then her hand sought Mar- 
garet’s. 

“ You are a good girl, my dear,” she said, “ and you 
have been kind to my boy. When you see him again, 
tell him that his mother loves him, that his mother 


THE LOST LEGION 


123 


never forgets. Tell him that I’m all alone, with no 
one but him, and that his old place is waiting for him, 
whenever he will come.” 

Two hours later Margaret Gair made her way 
down the long stairs. Her own heart was comforted 
and made stronger by the quiet courage it had found 
in Bud Caven’s mother’s gentle heart. So it is that 
sometimes God makes His children ready for the bur- 
den they must carry through the years, she told her- 
self. Oh, the long, long years! 


CHAPTER XI 


“ * before the optic nerve loses its sensitive- 

ness.’ ” Margaret paused, her eyes involuntarily seek- 
ing John’s face. The words she had read brought to 
her more vividly than ever before what it was that he 
suffered. She could partially comprehend his gradual 
realization of the coming of the interminable night. 
For the first time she realized that John Ford must 
have known the fate that was in store for him long 
before it had come. And just there she found another 
evidence of the manhood, of the spirit which, though 
she did not think of it, matched her own, and it was 
the very same spirit, the very same courage that she 
herself would need, as long as life was left within her. 

In the long pause a thought came to John’s busy 
mind that made him turn to Margaret eagerly. 

“ Edith,” he said, “ what a strange coincidence it 
is. You have paused, and indeed stopped reading at 
the very sentence at which I, too, stopped, on the last 
day I could see, the last day I could read. I can guess 
what comes next. But it is just there that I show my 
lack of self-forgetfulness, my selfishness, for I cannot 
think of it now as I used. I cannot be impersonal 
about it. And the worst of it is that this feeling grows 
no less as time passes. It is a difficult lesson to which 
to adapt one’s philosophy of life.” 

124 


THE LOST LEGION 


125 


“ I know/’ said Margaret gently. “ But you and 
I will not have to add it permanently to our philoso- 
phy — at least, you will not, for we are going to find 
the way to bring you back to your full usefulness 
again.” 

John Ford shook his head. 

“ I am afraid I have not your confidence, Edith,” 
he said. “ When it first came upon me I fought, and 
desperately, telling myself that there must be a way, 
that there was a way, and that I would find it. But as 
the days passed the darkness absorbed heart and soul, 
till for a long time there has been no glimmer of hope 
to keep the horror away. But now — now it is easier 
for some reason. It almost seems as if I can hope 
again, and this time the hope is not as before, merely 
the wanting, the wishing for sight again. Rather the 
thought of self is lost now. I feel that, in some way 
that is inexplicable to me, it will mean infinitely greater 
happiness to us if once again I can take my place 
among those who are useful to the men and women 
who are about them, to the little children, to those whb 
need help. You have brought this to me, Edith, 
though only now. I felt it first on the day when you 
proposed to be a new Edith. I do not mean any re- 
proach in what I say. I merely want you to know, to 
understand, what it is to me to have you helping me 
and sharing with me these long, wonderful hours over 
our books or with our music, or talking together as we 
are now — why, I feel the courage coming back to me 
again — your courage, your brave spirit calling out to 
me through the darkness, helping me to find the way 
back to my manhood and my usefulness. Since that 


126 


THE LOST LEGION 


day I have not been alone — we have been finding the 
way together, always together.” 

John Ford reached forward, and felt about on his 
desk till his hand touched Margaret’s. The girl did 
not move. A woman who was less true, less pure- 
hearted, might have misconstrued the significance of 
' his act. Then John drew back, his face grown grave, 
in spite of the happiness of his new-found hope. Mar- 
garet turned again to the book and read on and on and 
on. At last John swung about in his chair. 

“ Now you must stop reading,” he said. “ My 
eagerness to have you read has made me selfish and 
forgetful of your tired eyes.” Then, after a pause: 
“ I want to talk to you again about your sister. Even 
though she has avoided me so, I believe that I under- 
stand her perfectly. It may be she does not like talk- 
ing to an old man like me.” 

“ It may be that she’s afraid of you,” suggested 
Margaret. 

John smiled. 

“ No, she’s not afraid.” 

The certainty with which John Ford always divined 
her true intent filled Margaret with uneasiness, not 
because it was so, for her heart knew he could not do 
otherwise, but because it seemed that he could not thus 
understand her so clearly and completely without 
recognizing the differences between Edith and herself. 
Perhaps he might forgive her if he could know all, but 
if he learned only of the deception she was practicing 
upon him he would banish forever even the recollec- 
tion of their times together. Yet the girl knew she 
must not appear unwilling to talk about Margaret. 


THE LOST LEGION 


127 


The wonderful similarity in their voices was scarcely 
enough of itself to maintain the deception. 

“ You must let me tell you some of Margaret’s ab- 
surd doings,” she said reluctantly. 

“ After you have told me of them, we will judge 
together whether they are absurd or not,” replied 
John. 

“ Well, I am sure you will think so, for who ever 
heard of a girl eager to bear the hardships of the 
rude life of the mountains when ease and luxury 
waited her here? She is a wild thing, too — up long 
before dawn to see the sky at sunrise, galloping 
about on her pony, doing all sorts of unconventional 
things.” 

“What if they are unconventional?” interrupted 
John. “ It is no stamp of merit for a thing to comply 
with the conventions. The real test is whether your 
sister Margaret is being true to the good as she sees 
it, and whether she is trying to grow nearer to the 
ideals that God has put into her heart. Whether a 
thing is conventional or not is but the opinion of some- 
one who decries that which, were he purer hearted 
and broader minded, he would only applaud. Some- 
how I feel that far away up there in the Rocky Moun- 
tains, face to face with God and with nature, she has 
been growing into a truer, purer womanhood than in 
the life she would have had to lead almost anywhere 
else.” 

“ Oh, do you think so? ” exclaimed Margaret. “ I 
knew you would! It is nearer God up there in the 
mountains. There is nothing to distract one, nothing 
to lead one away. There is just the Infinite and one’s 


128 


THE LOST LEGION 


self. I — I mean, Margaret says she is more impressed 
with that thought than with anything else.” 

“ I can understand how Margaret feels about it,” 
said John quietly. “ Strangely enough, I have felt 
just the same way here in New York. But it isn’t 
nearer to God out there. With Him, Space and Time 
are without significance. We find Him always in the 
same place — wfithin our own hearts. Yet it is un- 
doubtedly true that places and circumstances make it 
easier to find Him. It is just as one may make the 
serious error of trying to forget sorrow or disappoint- 
ment by losing one’s self in anything that will divert 
the mind from its loss; so we are apt to wander away 
from God by trying to forget the burdens He puts 
upon us, losing sight of the fact that the heavier the 
burdens He sends us the more precious the joys. 
Are we to lose His blessings because of our own 
unwillingness? ” 

“But how can we be willing and ready to listen 
with all these distractions that are about us here?” 

“ The being alone, Edith, depends solely on whether 
those about you are in sympathy with you or not. If 
they are not, their number may be legion and yet you 
are alone — as much alone as your sister Margaret, up 
there on her mountains at sunrise. What will you 
think when I tell you that I have never found anyone 
but you in whose companionship I was not alone? For 
it has been only with the new Edith that the under- 
standing has been complete.” 

The long afternoon was ending. Quiet had fallen 
over them, and peace. Neither of them noticed James 
as he entered the study. The man lighted the lamps 


THE LOST LEGION 


129 


and went away as quietly as he had come. Still the 
silence of these two was unbroken. At last an impulse 
caused Margaret to rise, and going to the long shelves, 
she selected a volume at random. Who shall say that 
chance alone guided her hands? Margaret noted the 
name of the great French specialist who was the author 
of the book she had selected. As she turned the pages 
absent-mindedly, her attention was arrested at last, by 
what she never knew. So the little things and the 
great ones come and go in this world without apparent 
rhyme or reason, just as Margaret stopped turning the 
pages that day and began to read. 

“ Here is the description of a remarkable opera- 
tion,” she said. “ I wonder if it will help any? ” 

“ What book have you? ” 

Margaret read the author’s name. 

“ The very man ! I wonder I never thought of him 
before ! He was a century ahead of the rest of us. 
Some of our profession think that he was scarcely sane, 
and yet there may be much of truth in his discoveries. 
Will you read it, please?” 

Margaret read the highly technical description of 
an operation which restored the usefulness of the optic 
nerve. When she had finished she needed no words 
from John to tell her that they had found what they 
sought. 

John Ford sat wrapped in thought. 

“ It is new to me, yet perhaps he is right,” he mused. 
“ I must think — I must think.” 

He rose and walked confidently to and fro across 
his familiar study floor. At last he paused and stood 
beside his desk, facing Margaret. 


THE LOST LEGION 


no 

“ If only I can find a surgeon skillful enough,” he 
said. “ Yet we are the ones who must take the risk, 
for if he fails ” 

“You mean to try?” asked Margaret quietly. 

The girl’s very self-control showed the agony of fear 
and dread that was in her heart. 

“ Of course. And I know, Edith, that you would 
not have me do otherwise. We must not shrink from 
this thing simply because its failure will result disas- 
trously. We must find the courage to try any means 
which holds a fair measure of promise of success.” 

“ If it succeeds,” said Margaret aloud, though 
speaking to herself, “ you will be yourself again, able 
to give all your knowledge and strength to help those 
about you. If it fails, we can only keep on trying 
as we are now. So we have everything to gain, have 
we not? Oh, I know it will succeed, I know it will 
succeed.” 

“ But if it fails, Edith,” said John quietly, “ there 
will be no need of trying to go on as we have been, 
because — because ” 

“ You don’t mean,” cried Margaret in alarm, “ that 
your life hangs in the balance? ” 

“ I’m afraid I do,” said John simply. “ It has been 
apparent to me for a long time that there was some 
undue pressure against the nerve leading from the eye 
to the brain. It is this pressure which must be re- 
moved — an operation necessarily so delicate in its na- 
ture that the slightest mischance might make a great 
difference in the result. You know, Edith, I do not 
wish to add unnecessarily to your anxiety, but it would 
not be a kindness to hide the truth from you.” 


THE LOST LEGION 


Hi 

The girl rose and stood beside him. 

“ I know,” she said slowly, “ I know. It is better 
that you should tell me just the risk. I will be braver, 
we will both be braver, because we will face this thing 
together and bear it together.” Then, after a pause, 
her voice still subdued from the mingled burden of 
love and apprehension: “ But when will you be ready 
to undergo it? Are you sure you can find someone 
equal to the task? From what we have read, it would 
seem that a man must be marvelously skillful to carry 
out all the delicate intricacies.” 

“ You are right, Edith,” replied John. “ It would be 
the most skillful work. A man would have to be al- 
most inspired to carry through so delicate an operation 
successfully. There is a young physician who formerly 
attended my lectures, who is capable of performing it, 
if I could but get his courage roused — for it will re- 
quire even more courage than skill. If he succeeds, 
he will have gained assured reputation, for such an 
operation is practically unheard of.” 

“ But is he mature enough? Has he gained enough 
in skill and experience? Would it not be wiser to have 
an older man — one who has been tried?” 

John Ford shook his head. 

“ No,” he said, u the older men are not the kind. 
They are well enough for the ordinary run of cases, 
but when something unusual confronts them they are 
often at a loss. The younger man has not yet had 
his confidence in himself shaken — he succeeds because 
he is still willing to take chances. It is because of this 
very confidence in himself that he is successful where 
an older man would have failed because of his doubts. 


132 


THE LOST LEGION 


No, it must be a young man, if it is to be tried at all. 
I will take a little time to get into proper physical 
condition, and then some day we will get it out of 
the way.” 

“ But you won’t undergo it too soon — not until you 
are quite certain that you are strong enough? ” asked 
Margaret apprehensively. Then — “ You will let me 
know — before? ” 

John Ford removed the black goggles, and passed 
his hand over his eyes and forehead. It was the first 
time Margaret had ever seen him when the black gog- 
gles had not been in place. The eyes were closed 
calmly, their lids resting quietly as though the man 
slept, or at least as though his spirit, self-contained and 
serene, were there, just behind the closed lids, waiting 
to look out at her reassuringly. 

“ I can tell you almost to a certainty, now, Edith. 
It will be within two weeks. I will get hold of young 
Boyd at the next meeting of the Medical Society. That 
is ten days off, which gives me time enough to rest 
in. He should be ready within a day or two after 
that.” 

Margaret Gair looked long and steadily at the broad 
forehead and the clean-cut features of the man before 
her. There passed through her mind all the possibili- 
ties that the two weeks to come held for them both. 
Then a great fear came to her heart — not that he 
would die — but that, even though seeing, he would 
have to go on as before, with Edith still unable to 
understand him, and so he would always be alone and 
unhappy. As must always be with those who love 
truly, Margaret could only want the object of her 


THE LOST LEGION 


H3 

love to be completely happy without thought for 
herself. 

“But you will tell me!” Margaret exclaimed. 
“ for it means so much — so much depends on it ! ” 

“Yes,” replied John gently, “ it does mean a great 
deal, perhaps more than either of us dreams, and I be- 
lieve that, through the years to come, we will feel that 
in doing this thing we have deliberately put aside any 
thought of our own happiness, believing it to be our 
first duty to use every means to make ourselves able 
to perform the best work that we can find to do, no 
matter at what cost to ourselves. Do I make myself 
plain, Edith? What I mean to say is that after a 
long while, we can perhaps rejoice together that we 
have been strong enough to-day to put aside the hap- 
piness we have found in being thus together, that I 
may perhaps become fit to take up my old work where 
I left it off. Through the weeks I have simply floun- 
dered about in the dark until this new self of yours 
came to put definiteness, purpose, back into my 
life.” 

Margaret could scarcely believe her ears. What 
could this mean other than that John Ford fully com- 
prehended all that had passed between them? Yet 
the girl reasoned that he could not know. 

“ But you do know, Edith,” he went on, “ that 
I cannot cause you one moment of sorrow or anxiety. 
I cannot take any step even toward regaining my sight 
without first considering every possible effect on you 
and your happiness that might follow, for you know 
your happiness means mine, too. So we will go slowly 
and carefully together.” 


134 


THE LOST LEGION 


The tone even more than his words made Mar- 
garet feel as if it were all in truth meant for her, as 
though for the instant the knowledge that there was 
such a person as Edith Ford was blotted out, leaving 
but the two selves in all the world, the two selves 
that were one. The girl crossed the room and stood 
beside John Ford. 

“ I know,” she said simply, “ and I trust you abso- 
lutely.” 

The house was silent. Margaret was alone in her 
room at last. She went to her window and, opening it, 
stood looking out into the street where the lamps 
burned intermittently bright and dim in the heavy, 
oppressive air. There came to Margaret the night 
sounds of the great city, the subdued roar as of the 
distant sea. All about her under the night sky the 
everlasting struggle of good against evil, the making 
of sorrow, the making of happiness, was going on. 
What was this night, what were these days, holding 
for John and her? 

The girl looked down the long years of the future 
and saw the endless days of loneliness stretching out 
into Eternity — the days in which she would be learn- 
ing to bear this burden alone. Would her spirit ever 
learn? Would her heart ever find the way to strug- 
gle on? Would not God find her wanting, now that 
he had called her to bear her cross? She could be 
thankful, at least, that John Ford would have to bear 
no part of it; that he would go on his way never 
knowing. 


THE LOST LEGION 


i35 


This and a thousand other thoughts crossed her 
mind, each a burning shaft that tortured her. At last, 
unable to endure it longer, she quietly opened the door 
of her room and stole out into the hall. The stillness 
of midnight was over the great house. She found her 
way down the stairway. The hall itself was dark, but 
the lights from the street, struggling in dimly through 
the heavy curtains, enabled her to pass quietly and 
safely through the library to John Ford’s study. The 
darkness, the quiet, gave her a sense of security, al- 
most of rest. She made her way to the chair that John 
Ford had occupied all that afternoon, and seating her- 
self, bowed her head till it rested on her arms on his 
desk. Then the girl sighed as does some tired child 
who has come home to rest. The next instant Mar- 
garet raised her head, for she heard, as though in a 
dream, John Ford’s voice coming to her softly out of 
the darkness. 

“ I knew you would come, Edith,” he said. “ I was 
waiting here for you.” 

The dim light showed John seated, strangely 
enough, in the chair Margaret had occupied in the 
afternoon. 

“ Oh ! ” she exclaimed, “ you should have been 
asleep long ago. You know you need all the rest you 
can gain.” 

“ Asleep? ” said John, with a little laugh. “ Rest? 
Why, I simply had to come here to rest. Wasn’t this 
the only place I could find it, here where you and I 
had been all this long, happy afternoon? It is only 
here that I could possibly be content, and as you know, 
to-night of all nights, I want to think clearly and 


36 


THE LOST LEGION 


calmly. It helps me to be here and to live again the 
happiness of our afternoon. Are you quite ashamed 
of me for being so selfish?” 

Margaret was glad, even though the man was blind, 
that the darkness hid the tears that slipped down her 
cheek. Oh, the joy, that John had found happiness 
even as she had! But the thought would come that 
John did not know that she was an impostor. Mar- 
garet rose. 

“ It is of myself that I am ashamed, not of you,” 
she said. “ But I must not stay here. You are to 
stay.” 

“ Why will you not stay here with me, Edith? Are 
you afraid to be alone with me? ” 

“Afraid?” asked Margaret in surprise. Then, as 
the full significance of the situation dawned upon her, 
— “ Not afraid,” she said, “ only it is wiser, better, 
that I should leave you alone.” 

“ But it was only because of you, Edith, that I 
wanted to come here. Having you here with me is 
immeasurably happier than even the recollection of 
this blessed afternoon.” 

But the girl put it all resolutely behind her. 

“ I cannot stay,” she said, “ but good-night to you, 
and God keep you safe.” 

“ Let me hear you say that again, Edith,” said John. 
“ Say it to me again.” 

“What?” asked Margaret. 

“ Say, ‘ God keep you safe.’ It is the first 
time in all the years I’ve known you that I’ve 
ever heard you say such a thing. Say it to me 
again,” 


THE LOST LEGION 137 

“ God keep you safe through the night,” Margaret 
whispered. 

Then, when she was again in her own room, the 
blessing she had asked for John seemed to have come 
to her own heart as well. 


CHAPTER XII 


The afternoon was ending. The Spring sunlight still 
fell across the house-tops, and the windows of the great 
buildings at the entrance of the Park reflected the glories 
of the sunset in burnished gold. In spite of the dust of 
the streets, the leaves were still young enough to be 
tender and green. Tired children, lingering on their 
homeward way, called to each other with fresh, young 
voices, that matched the freshness of the bit of nature 
about them. 

John Ford and Margaret stopped for a moment be- 
fore crossing the Avenue. 

“ Do you think,” said Margaret doubtfully, “ do you 
think you could walk down town a ways? It is not 
very late.” 

“ Yes, indeed, Edith,” replied John, “ let us walk 
all the way home.” 

They turned south and walked slowly down the Ave- 
nue. Many were the faces that looked after them as 
they passed, — the erect, splendid figure of the blind man, 
and the girl beside him, guiding his steps. 

The light of the dying day still touched the golden 
crosses on the spires of Saint Patrick’s when Margaret 
led John into the Cathedral. They found seats in a 
secluded pew. The quiet all about them was in har- 
mony with the peace in their own hearts. The roar 
of the city came to them as a subdued and comforting 
sound, but adding to their sense of security, reminding 
138 


THE LOST LEGION 


i39 


them of the harsher things of the world only to make 
them feel more strongly the completeness of their hap- 
piness together. The soft lines of the great Cathedral, 
its mysterious shadows, its great silence in which there 
mingled the unknown and the known worlds, made 
them feel as if just together, from some isolated point 
of vantage, they were being permitted to catch a 
glimpse of that which lies beyond the Eternal things. 

Thus they sat for a long while, motionless and silent. 
The windows on the western side of the great Cathe- 
dral glowed more and more dimly in the gathering 
darkness, while the night winds, slipping in from the 
sea, tapped gently upon the window panes, whisper- 
ing of the lonely, empty spaces of the world. The 
outlines of the altar grew less and less distinct, 
shrouded in a mist of darkness and silence. 

John Ford turned to Margaret. 

“ May I know? ” he said softly. 

Margaret raised her eyes to him, softened with a 
light so pure that the man’s heart would have risen to 
meet hers could he have seen. Her voice came to him 
like some tender spirit whispering out of the darkness 
that enveloped him, whispering to the heart of the 
waiting man. 

“ I lived with visions for my company 
Instead of men and women, years ago, 

And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know 
A sweeter music than they played to me. 

But soon their trailing purple was not free 
Of this world’s dust, their lutes did silent grow* 

And I myself grew faint and blind below 

Their vanishing eyes. Then THOU didst come to be. 


140 


THE LOST LEGION 


Beloved, what they seemed. Their shining fronts, 

Their songs, their splendors (better, yet the same. 

As river-water hallowed into fonts). 

Met in thee, and from out thee overcame 
My soul with satisfaction of all wants; 

Because God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame." 

After that neither of them spoke. The silence 
lasted until night had quite come. Slowly they found 
their way down the aisle. Outside, in the fresh night 
air, they paused a moment, Margaret’s hand on John’s 
arm. The girl looked up at him. Even in the uncer- 
tain light of the street lamps she could see that he 
was happier than she had ever seen him before. 


CHAPTER XIII 


Margaret was writing at her desk when her sister 
opened the door without knocking. Edith had thrown 
a long cloak over her evening gown, and, framed in 
the rich woodwork of the doorway, even Margaret 
was forced to admit to herself the effectiveness of the 
picture. In truth, Edith Ford was a part of the 
splendor of the whole house, and as impassive and 
indifferent. 

“ I am going out, my dear,” said Edith, drawing on 
her gloves. “ Sorry you won’t come, too. You have 
acquired horribly outlandish habits among your 
heathen in the West, such as going to bed early and 
rising about daylight. Worthington was always the 
same way. Doubtless he’s asleep now, though it’s 
scarcely nine o’clock. Yet it never did appear to rest 
him much. Even the last time I saw him, he looked 
so tired that I have been glad not to have had a sight 
of him for the past few days. You will not find a 
wrinkle in my face, and, though Worthington is but 
two years older, he looks a hundred. So going to bed 
early is evidently not responsible for one’s looking 
young.” 

Margaret Gair laid down her pen, and, turning, 
looked at her sister steadily. 

“ Does the thought never come to you,” she began. 
Then the uselessness of it made her stop. “ Does the 


142 


THE LOST LEGION 


thought never come to you,” she went on instead, 
“ that I might really and truly prefer to go to bed? ” 

“ There, there, I did not mean to tread on any of 
your beloved hobbies,” responded Edith pettishly. “ I 
suppose you will soon tire of our unhealthy ways of 
living and go bouncing off to the West, leaving poor 
me to bear all this trouble alone. But you always 
were selfish, Margaret, so I must resign myself to it. 
But I guess nothing matters much, for certainly be- 
fore another month is passed our money will be gone 
anyway.” 

“ I shall not go as long as I can help here,” said 
Margaret steadily. 

Her sister smiled down at her. 

“ That’s a dear,” she said. “ You do leave me quite 
free to escape these dreadful things. Worthington’s 
deformity — I suppose it amounts to that — possesses a 
perfect terror for me. The only way I can find any 
happiness is in completely forgetting it. So you see 
how I depend on you, Margaret. Good-by. I’m a 
half-hour late now.” 

Margaret Gair watched her sister’s retreating figure. 
The graceful form that had marked Edith’s girlhood 
had bloomed now into a splendidly molded woman, 
like some beautiful flower. Yet there was lacking all 
that which enriches the body — the heart and soul of a 
^ true and noble being. Her sister’s very eagerness to 
escape responsibility showed Margaret Edith’s heart- 
lessness, and the complete lack in her of those gentler 
things that would otherwise have crowned her with a 
splendid womanhood. What would it not have meant 
to John Ford? 


THE LOST LEGION 


143 


When Margaret heard the front door close she rose 
and went out into the hall. As she did so John Ford 
came from his room with his violin under his arm, 
and felt his way to the banisters and so along to the 
head of the stairs. The rustle of Margaret’s gown as 
she stepped aside to let him pass stopped him. 

“ Is that you, Edith? ” he asked. 

“ The new Edith,” Margaret replied. 

John Ford took a step forward and stood facing 
her. 

“ Forgive me,” he said, “ for the injustice I did you 
in my thoughts just now. I heard someone go out, 
and I almost let myself believe it was you. Not that 
there was any reason why you should not go, but in my 
selfishness I could not bear the thought of it being pos- 
sible for you to go out, of your wishing to go, when 
I was wanting you so, even though you did not know — 
when I was finding the time between our afternoon 
and the morning, to-morrow morning, so endless. Do 
you know, I wanted the music, but I wanted to share 
it with you. I could not bear to think of your having 
anything else you might prefer to do. Now you see 
the extent of my shortcoming,” he said, smiling. “ I 
deserve to be punished by being banished from your 
sight until to-morrow.” 

% Margaret shook her head. 

“ No,” she said, “ you do not need to be punished. 
Besides I am wanting the music, too. Let us go down 
together.” 

But John Ford stood irresolutely where he had 
stopped. 

“ There is still another confession I have to make,” 


‘44 


THE LOST LEGION 


he said. “ It has only been very recently that I have 
felt this way about the things you do, Edith. Before, 
it did not seem to matter. Now even the darkness 
loses its terror as I plan the things I want to tell you, 
the thoughts I want you to share. How ashamed of 
me you must be, now that you know.” 

Margaret touched his arm. 

“Come,” she said, “let us go down.” Then: “I 
am not ashamed. I am only glad.” 

“ Are you sure you are not too tired to humor this 
fancy of mine?” he asked. “I have been learning 
something new to play there in my room. When I had 
mastered it, I wanted you to hear it. What is more, 
I wanted us to be alone together. I wanted us to 
find in the quiet the happiness that has been ours dur- 
ing the last few days. Oh, Edith, it has made me so 
selfish — I can never be satisfied. I want to be with 
you so, to hear your voice, to know your thoughts. 
Everything has been so good, so worthy, matching 
yourself, Edith. I can almost be glad that I am blind, 
that this thing has now come true. Perhaps I may 
seem to be talking wildly, but it is all just as I have 
said.” 

“ I understand,” said Margaret gently. 

They reached the lower hall, and walking through 
the great drawing-room to the music-room beyond, 
Margaret seated herself at the piano. Standing be- 
side her, John drew the bow softly across the strings. 
It was an old tune that the world has sung for many 
a year. Margaret sang the words softly to herself 
as she played the accompaniment. Gradually the music 
wove the mystery of the inexpressible things about 


THE LOST LEGION 


i45 

them. The sense of time, the knowledge of material 
things, was lost in the new, unfathomable joy, the deep 
tenderness, the complete understanding the moment 
held for them. The ceasing of the music brought them 
back to the present, but the spell of it all was over them 
still. Had Margaret been more conscious of herself 
she would have realized that it was time when the 
untold things needed no telling. As it was, her pure, 
unselfish heart thought of John alone. At last John 
Ford touched Margaret’s arm. 

“ It will be the day after to-morrow,” he said quietly. 

Margaret did not move, but the man knew that she 
understood. 

“We will be ready, will we not? ” she asked him in 
her quiet voice. 

John touched her arm again, though neither of them 
was conscious of it, so infinitely gentle was he. 

“ Yes,” he replied, “ we will be ready.” 

Then, for a long time, neither spoke. At last Mar- 
garet Gair rose. 

“ You will need all your strength,” she said. “ Is 
it not best for you to try to sleep now? ” 

“ Doubtless you are right, Edith, yet I am weak 
enough to tell you of my selfishness. I have the whole 
of to-morrow to rest and prepare myself in, but now — 
now I want to be here with you, I want to talk with 
you, I want to hear your voice. A thousand fears 
come to me when I am up there in my room alone.” 

“ But if you rest to-morrow, we can at least see 
each other the day after, and before the operation 
takes place? ” 

44 Yes,” replied John, “ we will spend the morning of 


146 


THE LOST LEGION 


that day together as usual. To-morrow I will stay in 
bed, and besides, the Doctor wants to look me over. 
Perhaps you are right, perhaps it is better if I rest 
now.” 

Both man and girl were conscious of what the hour 
held for them. John’s very self-repression told of the 
longing and the loneliness, and of the terrible anxiety 
that the next few days would hold. 

“Let us stay a little longer,” said Margaret; “let 
me sing to you while you try to rest. Here is an easy 
chair right by the piano. You pretend to sleep while 
I sing.” 

John Ford sat down and leaned back gratefully. 

“Do you really want to sing, Edith?” he asked 
wistfully. “Are you sure?” 

Something in John’s tone made Margaret’s heart 
rise as though to meet his. She turned her clear, true 
eyes and looked long and steadily at the blind man. 
Oh, that all men and women might be able to banish 
from their hearts, as did Margaret Gair, every selfish 
thought, putting aside for the moment even the terri- 
ble anxiety for his safety that had come to her, and 
striving for John’s sake to make him conscious only 
of a sense of security and confidence in which he might 
find the rest he needed and the strength which must 
be his to bear successfully the ordeal that was before 
him. But each of them blundered in their effort to 
help the other, for when Margaret had finished her 
song John said: 

“ Now you are tired too, Edith, so I will go to my 
room and leave you to rest as well, and we will both 
try to sleep, won’t we?” 


THE LOST LEGION 


i47 


Margaret hesitated. 

“ I suppose that is best,” she said, at last. 

So the two made their way up the stairs, nor did 
they say good-night when Margaret left John at the 
door of his room. 


CHAPTER XIV 


The following day was one to which Margaret 
never let her thoughts return. Slowly it passed, slowly 
night ensued. Then again the day dawned, after long, 
sleepless hours in which despair and loneliness had 
striven with anxiety and solicitude in the effort to de- 
prive Margaret’s heart of the measure of courage 
needed to carry her through the day. 

Margaret put on one of the simple gowns that she 
herself had made for her work in the school at Para- 
dise. It was blue, and the girl smiled faintly as she 
remembered the first day she had worn it, and how 
the children had gathered about her admiringly and 
clutched it tight with the hands which she had never 
been able to get them to keep clean. Now that the 
day had come which would be the last that she would 
ever have with John Ford, she wanted this gown, that 
she could keep through the years, to be part of it, to 
help her remember the blessedness of these short days, 
and to forget, if it were possible, a little of the 
sorrow, or it might be, make the sorrow easier to 
bear. 

Would she have strength enough to go through the 
last day without letting him know what it was meaning 
to her? No matter what the cost to herself, Margaret 
knew that no weakness on her part that morning was 
148 


THE LOST LEGION 


149 


to make John Ford less fitted for the ordeal of the 
day. How glad she was that he had none of the 
heart-break that she was enduring! 

It was not yet time for John to have gone to his 
study, so Margaret busied herself in making the prep- 
arations for her departure the following day. So sim- 
ple and complete was the girl’s faith in God’s purpose 
that there should be a successful outcome of the opera- 
tion, and that John’s sight would be restored, that she 
never considered any alternative. 

When at last Margaret entered the study John 
Ford rose from his accustomed chair and turned to- 
ward her. A bandage replaced the great goggles he 
had worn through the days they had been together. As 
he rose John removed this, and looked at her with 
eyes that could see. 

With a cry, Margaret turned away and hid her face 
in her hands. She heard John cross the room quickly. 
Then she felt his arms clasp her close. 

“ Margaret,” he whispered, “ Margaret, forgive 
me ! It was cruel to shock you ! ” 

She raised her eyes and looked at him through her 
tears. But she did not try to withdraw herself from 
him. 

“ How you must despise me!” she said brokenly. 
“ How I despise myself! Yet you ask me to forgive 
you ! ” 

“ Despise yourself? ” Then, as their eyes met, John 
Ford’s words faltered and the two stood there gazing 
silently into each other’s heart. In that long moment 
the truth that God had sent to them needed no telling. 

At last John was about speak, but the girl stopped 


i5o 


THE LOST LEGION 


him. In spite of the knowledge that had come to 
them the girl whispered: 

“ When the day comes that you can think kindly 
of me, I want you to remember that I deceived you 
only in the hope of making the days we have spent 
together less bare and desolate and lonely for you; 
that there was no thought of myself in it all.” 

John Ford led the girl over to his easy chair and 
placed her in it gently, for she was trembling so that she 
could scarcely stand. Then he bent over her, replac- 
ing the bandage as he did so, that his eyes might be 
shielded again. 

“ Margaret, my Margaret,” he said gently, “ does 
your heart for one moment think that it deceived me? 
Does your heart for an instant think that, even though 
blind, I could confuse you with Edith? Do you think 
I did not guess immediately your purpose in suggesting 
the pitiful play by which we have tried to keep each 
other happy through the days? What you have done 
was right and good, just as all that has ever passed 
between us has been right and good, as God wanted it 
to be. You know this, and I know it, too. Any other 
way would have been impossible for us.” 

For a moment John paused. As he did so Margaret 
raised her hands and touched the half-covered eyes. 

“ How thankful I am,” she murmured, “ that you 
can see again — that you have passed through it all 
safely. Oh, how glad I am, even though it banishes 
us from each other forever.” 

John’s glance made her silent again. 

“ Do not say that it banishes us from each other 
forever,” he said. “ Rather must it be that the ful- 


THE LOST LEGION 15 1 

fillment of our love is to be different from that which 
comes to most people. Oh, if you could know of the 
nights and days, since you came to me, in which I have 
struggled with this thing. I shall never let you know 
how hard it has been, Margaret. But you — you have 
taught me what it is that God has meant our love to 
be. To no man or woman since the world began or 
until it ends will love mean more than it does to us. 
God asks us to cling to it, to believe in it, to make it 
all that life holds for us, even though each of us is 
alone. He has not sent us this love as some wrong 
thing to be hidden or put away, but rather through 
our very sorrow and burden we are to find a way to 
infinite and everlasting happiness. To a woman with 
your pure heart, Margaret, love shall mean no less 
a thing than this. As for me, in loving you I can only 
try to reach up to where your dear self dwells, that 
you may not be ashamed of the man your heart loves. 
Throughout my life, until you came, I have been need- 
ing you, and now you have crowned it all, as God 
meant that you should.” 

Margaret raised her head and looked at John Ford. 

“ You have said just the words I have been want- 
ing to say to you, John,” she said. “ They have been 
in my heart always, I guess, waiting for you to come 
and make them real. Since that first day — since I saw 
and recognized you — I have never thought you would 
know or care, and I was ready to bear all the burden, 1 
if only I might have this little while, this little pre- 
cious time to comfort you, to try to help you where 
Edith had failed. Oh, how well I knew the ways in 
which she had failed a man like you! But, oh, John, 


152 


THE LOST LEGION 


what are we to do about Edith? How can I go and 
leave you alone? It was not the physical darkness 
that you had to bear, but the darkness that was spoil- 
ing your life because she could not help you. You 
know me too well to think that I am wanting you for 
myself, that — oh, you do understand. I had thought 
to slip away before you had even a chance to see me 
— just as soon as I knew you were safe, — that you 

could see. But now — now ” 

“ Now,” said John, taking up her words, “ we must 
seek together to gain the strength we will need to go 
the way God is pointing out to us. I know we shall 
succeed, because of your pure heart, Margaret. The 
fault of all these things is mine. None of it is yours. 
For both of us, Margaret, the years lie long and hard, 
stretching out before us till God is ready to take us to 
Him. For both of us, so far as outward things are 
concerned, life is to go on as before. God has let it 
be so that both of us can be true to each other, and 
still do those things which it is our duty to do. You 
know that I can keep your sister happy without in any 
way failing in my truth to you. And you will know, 
too, that I will take up my work where I left it, and 
will use every energy, every hour, as best I may, that 
in the end God will not find me wanting in the hard 
task He has set before us. You see how sure I am of 
you, for I know you will not fail. Whether it will be 
in this world or not, I do not know, Margaret, but I 
will come to you again. Oh, Margaret, how can I 
say these words to you? Help me, dear,” he said 
falteringly. Then, before he went on, he touched 
Margaret’s brown hair softly and caressingly, as 


THE LOST LEGION 


i53 


though telling it a last farewell. “ Help me,” he con- 
tinued, “ to put out of my heart all that is selfish and 
unworthy. I am nearly failing you now, yet, when I 
look into your true eyes, I know that no wrong thing 
can ever come near to us or to our love.” 

Margaret’s eyes sought his unfalteringly. 

“ I cannot be brave as you are,” she said brokenly. 
“ You must give me a little time to get strong enough.” 

“ It is I who is the weaker. It is I who will fail 
when the time of parting comes.” 

“ But that time is now, John,” said Margaret. 
“ Only it is unfair to you, for I have been ready, or 
rather trying to get myself ready for to-day, from 
the very moment that the possibility of your regain- 
ing your sight came to us. Oh, how can we ever let 
each other go ! I am almost weak enough to ask why 
God wants us to bear that.” 

“ Margaret, we must not ask why these things are. 
We must only try to find the way that is the right one 
for us. When I am away from you I am almost 
afraid to have you near me again, lest I should fail 
and, in failing, hurt our love. If I were a stronger 
man and a better one, Margaret, I would say to you, 
let us go through the years together as we have begun, 
let us find such happiness as we may in the innocent 
things we have shared, and a higher purpose, and a 
greater usefulness. But we must try to believe that 
things are best as they are, after all. Edith has done 
what she could. The fault has been mine rather than 
hers, though you know it is only the material things 
she needs for her happiness.” 

“ I know how empty your life has been, John. I 


154 


THE LOST LEGION 


don’t want it to be so. I can almost wish that it was 
— no, I can’t wish that, for I know that no one but I 
can ever fill your life with the things you need.” 

She felt John’s arm about her. 

“ You are in your own place now, Margaret, here in 
my arms, and none but you shall ever fill it. I have 
planned to-day and what we should say to each other 
a thousand times, as doubtless you have, too. I want 
us to have this little while to look back upon forever, v 
I want our love out of its greatness, out of its good- 
ness, to fill the heart of each of us, so that there 
will be a great measure of contentment in it for us 
always.” 

Margaret’s eyes answered John’s. There were 
never the words that could tell that which was unfolded 
to each in that moment. 

“ John,” she said at length, “ a parting such as 
this might mean death to the love of some men and 
women, but we love each other more dearly than 
that. I have never let myself think of having more 
than that which these few weeks have held; but, oh, 
how I have wanted all the other things; oh, how I 
want them now ! ” 

“ I, too, want them,” interrupted John. u I have 
wanted you, I have wanted a home, I have wanted you 
to bless it, I have wanted you to help me bring our 
children to a manhood and womanhood so that they 
can find a love in their turn that will match our own.” 

“ Let us not think of such things, John,” said Mar- 
garet. “ Let us put aside all thoughts of them, lest 
it should make the love we have less than it now is. 
All that is mine, now and forever, and all of me is 


THE LOST LEGION 


i5S 


yours, now and forever. No kiss, save yours, shall 
ever be upon my lips; no arms, save yours, shall ever 
be about me. And so this parting but means for our 
love a beginning more glorious than any other could 
be. Tell me good-by now, John, and let me go from 
you before my strength fails.” 

“ Oh, Margaret, how can I? ” 

Suddenly the strong man’s courage left him. Mar- 
garet’s tenderness, her high resolve, made him know 
how endless the years would be to her, to them both. 
The hopes, the fears, a lifetime, could not be crowded 
into these few moments. Both were speechless before 
their love and its sorrow. 

How long a time passed neither of them ever knew, 
but at last John said: 

“ We will not say good-by, Margaret. I know that 
to-morrow you will go away. I know we will never 
see each other again. You and I need not — cannot say 
good-by. Go, Margaret — or if it will be easier for 
you, I will go.” 

Margaret looked up at him, smiling bravely now, 
though the tears were running down her cheeks. 

“ I will go, John,” she said simply. 

For an instant their clasp tightened. Then she 
slipped from him. At the threshold she turned. There 
were no words, as there had been no caress, but just 
one last look. 

The closing of the front door and the sound of 
Edith Ford’s step in the library told Margaret that 
her avenue of escape was cut off. A moment later 
Edith swept into the room. 

“ I thought I would find you here,” she began, pull- 


156 


THE LOST LEGION 


ing at her gloves. Then, as though impelled, she 
looked at her husband. 

“ Why,” she exclaimed, “ Worthington can see ! ” 
As pale now as the two before her, she threw herself 
into a chair. 

“Oh, how glad I am!” she cried. “How glad! 
Everything can go on now just as I had planned.” 


CHAPTER XV 


Slowly and laboriously the train made its way up 
the eastern slope of the Rockies. Winding in and out, 
twisting and groaning on the steep ascents, up, up it 
crawled, while the streams dwindled and the gorges 
deepened. Far, far above, the mountain peaks raised 
themselves sublimely. 

Margaret Gair watched it all with no eagerness. 
She knew that after a while the streams that sought 
the East would cease and she would find again her own 
stream flowing down the western side of the mountains 
and on past Paradise. 

The streams that sought the East! Margaret was 
thankful that she was quite alone. 

On the mountain sides the day faded into twilight, 
while down in the valleys it was night. The train with 
its flaring headlight at last began to move more swiftly 
on the decline. Margaret peered out into the darkness. 
Somewhere, far ahead and below her, was Paradise. 

“ They can hardly expect me yet,” she told herself. 

Soon the stream beside the track broadened, and 
even in the night Margaret recognized familiar places. 
At last the train came to a standstill, its brilliant lights 
illuminating the single street of Paradise from end 
to end. Margaret stood on the platform of the car 
while the vestibule was being opened. The pure air 
of the mountains came to her. She stepped down. 


57 


58 


THE LOST LEGION 


There were the stupid, flaring lamps lighting the for- 
lorn station; there was the desolate, straggling street. 
Involuntarily Margaret’s eyes sought the dark out- 
lines of the mountains above. But there was no com- 
fort even there for her. 

Suddenly the girl found herself surrounded by eager 
N men. It was Neptune Lynch who pushed them all 
aside. 

“ The boys is only tryin’ to welcome you home, Mis’ 
Margaret,” he said. “ Fer two days we’ve been 
a-meetin’ every train from the East. I calcalate you 
know how glad we are you’re back. There’s been 
nothin’ but hard luck in Paradise sense you went 
away.” 

Margaret shook hands with each of them. 

“ I knew as how you’d come back,” said Ike Moss- 
man. “ Me ’n Bud stood up fer that agin all the rest. 
We jest knowed it, didn’t we, Bud? Why, where is 
Bud?” 

“Yes, indeed, where is Bud?” asked Margaret. 

Just then the train started, leaving the little group 
at the lonely mountain station gazing after it. Mar- 
garet watched the red lights on the rear coach until 
they disappeared far down the valley. The rough men 
about her, respecting her silence, stood a little apart 
while she watched. When the train was gone Mar- 
garet turned to them cheerily. 

“ Now, where can he be ! ” she exclaimed. “ I want 
to see you all. You must tell me everything that has 
happened since I went away.” 

Margaret glanced from one to another of the 
friendly faces about her, all so eager in their welcome. 


THE LOST LEGION 


159 


“ Not now, Mis’ Margaret,” said Neptune Lynch. 
“ Mis’ Craft has been keepin’ your supper fer you till 
this train come in, every evenin’ sense we got your let- 
ter sayin’ you was cornin’, and I expec’ she’s waitin’ 
fer you now.” 

Margaret looked up the street. There was the fa- 
miliar light burning in the Craft kitchen, and the girl 
knew that in the darkness beside it was the window 
of her room. The window of her room ! Behind that 
window, through the darkness of interminable nights, 
Margaret saw (nor was it with pity for herself) the 
endless hours in which she would struggle with John’s 
loneliness and her own — the nights upon nights, the 
winters and the summers and the winters again, 
through the bloom of young womanhood, through the 
quieter years, until at last God would set her spirit 
free to seek its happiness. Yet even at the beginning 
of the journey, the beginning which she was facing 
that night, Margaret had no doubt that somewhere 
beyond the sky the fulfillment of their happiness was 
waiting for them. 

Later that night, while Margaret was helping Mrs. 
Craft wash the dishes, she looked up to find Bud 
Caven’s strong figure framed in the doorway. 

“ You said you’d come back, an’ you did. I never 
really believed you would,” he confessed bluntly. 

Margaret dried her hands on the rough dish towel. 
Oh, that John might have seen her standing there with 
the broad lamplight falling upon her lithe, young 
figure. Nor would one have guessed that beneath the 
simple gown of blue there was a heart that was heavy 
with the loneliness. 


i6o 


THE LOST LEGION 


“ Of course I came back, Bud,” she said. “ You 
knew I belonged to Paradise.” 

Bud Caven entered and shook hands with Mar- 
garet. 

“ Not to this Paradise,” he replied. “ Good-evenin’, 
Mis’ Craft,” he added apologetically. Then, retiring 
to the doorway again, “ I’ll wait here till you finish, 
Mis’ Margaret.” 

Half an hour later Margaret Gair was seated on 
the doorstep, while Bud Caven lounged at his ease on 
the porch, the lamplight full upon him. But Mar- 
garet saw only the distant mountains, dim in the night 
light, and the stars looking silently down upon it all. 
Though she plied Bud with queries about the children 
of her school, and about all the happenings in Para- 
dise through the short weeks of her absence, she was 
conscious neither of her questions nor of his replies. 
After a while Margaret said gently: 

“ I saw your mother in New York, Bud. Do you 
know how she believes in you, how she loves you? 
I was very happy to be the one to tell her just the 
sort of man you are. Both your mother and I are 
proud of you.” 

Bud Caven looked up eagerly into Margaret’s face. 

“ You wouldn’t tell me you was proud of me if you 
wasn’t. It’s you that’s done it, Mis’ Margaret, you 
and mother together. A man couldn’t help bein’ 
straight with two such women to look after 
him.” 

“ You must let me be to you as though I were your 
mother, Bud, as though I were here in her place, 
watching over you as she would. Yet it will always 


THE LOST LEGION 


161 


be in such a way as not to bother you or to make you 
feel that I do not trust you.” 

Bud Caven looked up at Margaret with steady eyes. 

“ I understand you, Margaret,” he said at length. 
“ I know what you mean. You need not be afraid. 
I will make myself worthy of what you say you will 
be to me, even though I can never be worthy of any- 
thing more. God bless you both, you and mother to- 
gether,” he faltered, turning away from her. But it 
was the boyish Bud Caven, again his nonchalant self, 
that turned toward her a moment later. 

“ Now I’m off,” he said gayly, “ down the trail jest 
to keep the pony’s blood in motion. Good-night.” 

The girl listened to the beat of the horse’s hoofs as 
Bud galloped off. Then all was silence again. Mar- 
garet stood alone in the darkness. 

“ John,” she whispered, “ John! ” 

Then she went into the house. 


CHAPTER XVI 


Far off in golden splendor the sun sank behind the 
mountains, tinging the heavens with its glory. In the 
east the sky was blue and deep and pure. 

A man lay hidden among the broken rocks, watch- 
ing the figure of a woman outlined against the sky — a 
figure as motionless as the rocks themselves. Twi- 
light faded, and still the woman stood gazing toward 
the East, and still the man lay hidden from her sight, 
watching her. Suddenly he raised himself on his elbow 
and listened intently. Then he drew his revolver. 
The next instant the face of a younger man peered 
from behind a rock. He, too, was watching the 
woman. He started in surprise as he suddenly dis- 
covered the prostrate form of the man before 
him. 

“ Bud Caven ! ” exclaimed the newcomer. Then he 
glanced at the revolver. But the man on the ground 
only raised his hand warningly. 

“Shut up!” he whispered. “You’ll disturb her! 
She’s there alone.” 

The newcomer nodded. 

“ I know,” he said. “ Night after night, just at 
dusk, I’ve seen her a-standin’ there. Thought I’d come 
over to-night to see if she was safe. Them pesky Flat- 

162 


THE LOST LEGION 163 

heads is full of whiskey, and if one of ’em was to 
touch her ” 

Bud Caven raised himself to a sitting posture and 
took off his slouch hat. Then he ran his fingers through 
his gray hair and pulled his beard, that was streaked 
with gray, too. 

“So you thought you’d come, did you?” he said 
sneeringly. “Thought you’d come to protect her? 
Why, boy, for more than thirty year, night after night, 
I’ve been here, right here on the ground behind this 
rock, through rain and snow, watchin’ over her jest 
like this at dusk, and her not knowin’. Why, I was 
only a boy, a boy no older’n you when she begun.” 

“ You don’t say! ” said the other, in slow astonish- 
ment. “You don’t say!” Then, after a pause, 
“Why do you s’pose she does it, Bud?” 

Bud Caven shook his head. 

“ You’ve heard her talk,” he said doubtfully. “ You 
know the sort of thing she says about the sky and 
the mountains, and about God. I used to think p’r- 
haps she came out to see the sky when the sun was 
settin’, and then I know’d it couldn’t be that, be- 
cause she always stood lookin’ toward the East, and 
she came, too, jest at night, even when it was stormin’. 
Sometimes I’ve thought ’twas because she wanted her 
folks, because she was lonely, way off here with all 
of us that’s so rough and so different from her, and 
sometimes — sometimes I’ve thought ” — Bud Caven’s 
voice dropped to a whisper and faltered just a little 
bit — “ that there’s someone she’s been a-carin’ a heap 
about through all these years, and that she come out 
here to be alone with him! ” 


164 


THE LOST LEGION 


The other man looked at the solitary figure still 
silhouetted against the sunset sky, a figure from which 
the passing years had taken none of its girlishness. 

“ Perhaps you’re right, Bud,” he said uncertainly, 
“ perhaps you’re right.” 



/ 


V 































































V - '* 
















































































































































































































































T! 








































DEC 29 1909 














































One copy 


del. to Cat. Div. 


JAN 11 1810 


J FWf * ** yfkffcrlFfcf * > - - » f 4 J <y*«9 * 4 ? S 4 4F%i' w| P%fSf s/yT 4 / L> >«f wJl • *•’ y* L 1 

* 4 *r lr* ?4r&T«Efrr!lr4:fcrif jf3r*F>rtflr4'4P Y?i**»Ar ^ l WSrVf F4rw v A v ‘V -• *v* ‘ 

' s tflr5» ifffXifirW <>-,< %#*♦* *{ jtfWk'Mr?* >**;’>♦ #*»■ %■*' 

m * .* • • S •Jr* »f iW ' 1 l*i’*lF'" ' fjM' * *v **%»4 ; .‘4* » *4 , , * «f 4 1 fc»* - * h4 - W • » J 

Pf rlrs*?liT®Blf irfPJFl^VlrlTi* 5* VlT^rT’ ^nrr |fWfc»%f4!*i,4%? Wftr VfifYPiPY 4 

k**rSlf V ■F'lFt* r ' k * *■' ***♦ A* r kTbPi ' <t»9fFk* »" s »'' wrk l «'\i'- . ,**i v4f*fc » «-*wi7 < 

*1* *r»"i;V':*FAr; v »4rrf4ff4rlr4*s7Wirf ArYfv i Wir*if,tA^f< 'Wu^rPV/ ^4***^? • f 


**v 






^ t 4 > Y> 4 


P i 4 hJi , r 



L*. 









%>#* 


• » , 

tf'k 1 ' k^*l 

'*r»rSF *»♦, 

J 

PJfVfi 


* 

* - *4 ^ H 1 


f VF>,4»l9* 

4F4fc 

to r.'* % lr 

» A 

k»s**f *• 

» J^ftf 4 0 

V f £*4* > 


!»*• f Y V ir • 



)lFkMr\#9 


4*%f< 

ll # vfw! 

fi 

V 4 |f 

r5***frr yt 

L • *. i4F-» 

P fc iMr' 

F J .•• Vv^ 

9 


K kMS' 

f#k>j 

«rMf si 

49 

t Y itf 4*4 


L < t/Y#. 


f 4< 

f It 


^T#rkf 4#4 

1 Lkk^W i 

^ ^ a * 

* v < 


Y R kr w 

• 4 4 - ‘ S ▼ Sr’ 

7 %lWh "F 

* 4 rk 

f^lf ^*kl 


1 ^ 4P % Pkf 

V y “ 1 ' y f 4 

■ 

i » kV % A -» 

f 4 

V w \ 4 * . 


%>' 4P |f S 

rir 1 ^*r 

• 1 r* w y t 


% * V* 


* * 

«4 

t *f f Sf tf 4 4 




v 


. • « 9 » • 4 ~ t 

k w k ,* k *' .1 

>t r J ► 

k? •'riii 

▼ 4 '** * I* 1 


•’•Ijffil 

« j^kr Vfli 

4 • 4 V 4 f W T V 

* i# 


Ift • L“> Vi 



4« > fcf »y 







* f 4f .^p 

^ W® k 

T§f • 

1 l 


* T **'* 1 * 1 ' V 

V r if f 


•Ht*t 


ttfitU 

* i ¥ i ™L - y v 

s . , V 4 f- 

f L f» , 

F S * 1*4 


t r If tf if m 

1 * * W~ik T 4 * 

4 rw 

4“ 


f y t s » • v f- 

t‘«'V 


Ff^-yFfc 

*k 


*4 !• % 


'I **rY‘ 

| J 


rlcv!i 

tkfk * yfjY 

^ T Jlf 


* J t* 

■ 4' 

k V' Vf 4^4 F 1 S' 



«ir s f i»r 


if 4*4' 4 

#• 9 1 ( 4 * Lk 

^ W * ITy > 

“4< l W 

Ak*4*» j 



i¥ jt^ \¥ ^ 


» i’ 


«*i' k >.**i i.** * 

■‘‘fWf 4 * S * V* * ■ - ■ 1 

'if J' lrli 

tTlfliin 

*)»/ v* 4^* • #4 0 4 »* J »* > 

** % l V r *»* y^Yi *>P **F 

fc S4%'»S , <4Mfi 4j 
bfYTJr # yf4i w-WF 


*r 

4 * Y < M ' 


k 4 fcA .. 4 « 


*jrt 





* ♦* « 



